If you find yourself adjusting either the font or paragraph spacing regularly, you may want to modify the Normal style to reflect your word processing preference. The 10-point spacing after each paragraph means that you need to press only once. In Word 2007, Normal style is set to Calibri, 11-point font with 10-point spacing after each paragraph. In Word 2003, Normal style included Times New Roman, 12-point font with no specified paragraph spacing (i.e., the 0 space after a paragraph meant you pressed twice to get a blank line between paragraphs). Word's Normal style affects the style of text in all new documents. This article is based on legacy software. (Archives) Microsoft Word 2007: Changing the Normal Style Defaults (Archives) Microsoft Word 2007: Changing the Normal Style Defaults.Learn more about UWEC's COVID-19 response. Student Expression, Rights & Responsibilities.Mayo Clinic Health System Collaboration.If you have different clients with different grammar/sentence rules, there’s no simple way to change them for different documents or templates. Grammar settings, including Space Between Sentences are at the program level not the document level. If there’s a problem with sentences spacing in Word, it’s a broader problem with the grammar checking system. No need to scroll down a long list because ‘Space between Sentences’ is right there. Go to Word | Preferences | Spelling Grammar | Writing Style | Settings. The settings are the same in Word for Mac, just in a slightly different place. They’ve not changed the setting if you’ve chosen “ Don’t Check’ or perhaps if ‘Double Space’ was explicitly selected. That’s controlled at File | Options | Proofing | Writing Style | Settings then scroll way down to Punctuation Conventions. Why now? It seems Microsoft has decided to make the change during the deployment of their new cloud-based Editor system.
Microsoft has changed the default setting to single space after a sentence. In Word 365 with the new Editor, it’s under ‘Punctuation Conventions’ Sentence spacing checks have been in Word for many versions with a squiggly line appearing. Most style guides (public and in-house) go for single sentence spacing. A single space after a sentence is all that’s needed for legibility.
the letters ‘i’ or ‘t’ use less space than ‘w’ or ‘m’). Word-processors use variable spaced fonts (e.g.
Those of us who learned manual typing were taught double spacing and it’s a hard habit to break! Each user can choose for themselves, which they’ve been able to do for years.īack in the days of manual typewriters with fixed space fonts, double spaces after sentences helped readability.