How to Adjust Line Spacing around a Paragraph in Word 2007

You can add space before and after paragraphs in your Word 2007 documents. This is a great way to spread out a list of bullet points or numbered steps without affecting the line spacing within the bullet points or steps.

This isn’t the same as double-spacing the text inside the paragraph. In fact, adding space around a paragraph doesn’t change the paragraph’s line spacing.

1

Select text that you want more space around.

Position the insertion pointer in the paragraph, or mark a block of paragraphs to affect them all.

2

Check the point size of your text.

It’s listed on the Home tab, in the Font group.

3

Click the Page Layout tab.

Head over to the Paragraph group, about mid-Ribbon.

4

Add space before or after the paragraph.

Use the spinners in the Before and After boxes in the Paragraph group to adjust the value. As you do this, the paragraph (or paragraphs) grow extra spacing. For example, if your text size is 12 points, click the up arrow by After until the value 12 appears in the box. This adds 12 points, or one blank line, of space after each paragraph you type.

The space you add to the paragraph becomes part of its format, just like line spacing would, although the space afterward appears only after the paragraph's text.

Comments (2)

  1. Posted by Charlie
    Despite what is written here in "dummies...", this method does not work for bullet point lists in Word 2007 (it used to in earlier versions...grrr!). Word 2007 treats lists of bullet points (even though they are all spearated by a paragraph) as one big paragraph and just alters the "before spacing" above the first bullet point and the "after spacing" below the last bullet point. A new and very annoying feature!
  2. Posted by 4ndyman
    Charlie:
    I had never noticed that before. That certainly is a pain. There might be some workarounds involving removing the bullet format, formatting the text, and then reapplying the bullet format, but it shouldn't be that complicated!
    Maybe MS will fix this in the next version?

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