Spacing above first line of bullet text

[Geoff Tucker]

Just like you can format a certain amount of spacing (leading) before and
after a paragraph, I want to modify my Styles Bulleted style to automatically
insert a fixed amount of space between the last line of a paragraph and the
list of bulleted items that follow it.

Right now, my document template is set up for single spacing. It requires
two hard returns at the end of a paragraph to have a blank line between
paragraphs. When the user starts a list of bulleted items, I need some
additional white space before the list starts to set it apart, but not as
much space as a single line height. I am using Times New Roman in 11 point
size as my default fault, so I think 6 points of spacing above the first
bulleted line would be ideal.

When I click "modify" for the Styles Bulleted in the Styles palette, the
Paragraph option is grayed out in the Format pull-down on the bottom left. I
have looked through all the other settings and I cannot find a way to make
this happen.

Does any have any suggestions (preferably not manual formatting each time;
we're trying to automate this as much as possible) of how to make this work?

Thanks for your suggestions.

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Hi Geoff

Your problem is that your Bulleted style is a "List Style", not a paragraph
one. To get a hold on this, try using List Bullet style. Set some space
above, and if you want the bullet items to be single spaced check the "Don't
add space between paragraphs of the same style" box.

If you need to change existing bullet items, you should be able to do that
by selecting all the currently "bulleted" items via the Styles and
Formatting pane, and then applying List Bullet style (or whatever you
choose). Alternatively use Find and Replace.

 

[Geoff Tucker]

Hi Margaret,

Thank you for the answer. That does seem to be working so far. One last
question: if I want 2nd and 3rd level bullets to be different from the 1st
level bullet, how can I change that? I found how to modify what the bullet is
but so far I can't see how to change those lower level ones.

Thanks again!

 

[Margaret Aldis]

If you use the built-in styles more or less as provided, you can use List
Bullet 1, List Bullet 2 and so on and just make whatever modifications you
need to the bullet format. Each "level" is a separate style, with a separate
bullet item format.

Alternatively (neater but a bit more work), set up a hierarchy of bullets
using outline numbering. Start from your top level style (say List Bullet),
and when you get to the numbering dialog choose the Outline numbering tab
instead of the Bullets one. The Customize dialog allows you to set up
different formats for each level , each linked to a paragraph style.

For each level/style, select the level, select the bullet you want, set up
the indents, and link the level to a paragraph style (click the More button
to get to the style selector dropdown). The nice thing about using the
outline (multi-level) format is that you can change levels using the
indent/outdent button.