Exact line spacing is not working?

[WJ Shack]

In text with subscripts and superscripts, I have been using exact line
spacing since Word 1 on the Mac to avoid line spacing changing whenever a
subscript or superscript is used. Because the built-in super and subscripts
give very anemic looking results, I use my own sub and superstyles with the
font size reduced to 8 pt for 10 pt fonts and the character raised 3 pts and
lowered 2 pts respectively for subs and supers. With the 10 pt font, I use
an exact line spacing of 13 pts.

In the current version of Word (11.3), this seems to no longer work. I get
variable line spacing whenever a sub or super is used. The effect is very
obvious in Print Preview. The line spacing does seem to remain constant
with the built-in subs and supers. But this leaves me with the choice of
ugly line spacing or ugly subs and supers.

Is this a peculiarity of my system or did something really change recently
with the way Word handles exact line spacing?

 

[Elliott Roper]

In text with subscripts and superscripts, I have been using exact line
spacing since Word 1 on the Mac to avoid line spacing changing whenever a
subscript or superscript is used. Because the built-in super and subscripts
give very anemic looking results, I use my own sub and superstyles with the
font size reduced to 8 pt for 10 pt fonts and the character raised 3 pts and
lowered 2 pts respectively for subs and supers. With the 10 pt font, I use
an exact line spacing of 13 pts.

In the current version of Word (11.3), this seems to no longer work. I get
variable line spacing whenever a sub or super is used. The effect is very
obvious in Print Preview. The line spacing does seem to remain constant
with the built-in subs and supers. But this leaves me with the choice of
ugly line spacing or ugly subs and supers.

Is this a peculiarity of my system or did something really change recently
with the way Word handles exact line spacing?

I never thought the built-in was that ugly, so I don't know what it was
like before. I always use "at least". Since I have very low
expectations of Word's typographic capability, I am seldom
disappointed.
I tried an experiment, simpler than what you do.
Set format paragraph 14pt Garamond Premier Pro on exactly 16pt leading.
Insert super and subscript characters using format » font, so they come
out like Word intended. I then selected each character in turn and
increased the size by hitting cmd shift > repeatedly.

The leading stayed rock solid, the superscript behaved quite well,
maintaining its base line at the same height and finally clipping the
top of the superscript character when it reached the line above. My
first test with subscript was bizarre. As the character got bigger, it
seemed as though a point halfway up the character was trying to stay
aligned with its predecessor. Later I could not repeat that, and the
base of the subscript maintained its relative position as it grew, till
the top was clipped by the line above. For completeness, I relaxed the
leading to "at least" and observed that extra leading appeared to
accommodate the outrageously sized super and subscript characters.

For good measure, I confirmed that using EQ fields for super and
subscripting, so that I could have full control over size and baseline
also respected the exact leading. That's the way I would do it if I
ever wanted Word to do it right. But I have given up on Word's
typography. I'll slap the text into InDesign if it has to look
professional. There I can reliably align baselines in neighbouring
columns, get the justification to optimise paragraph wide, hang
punctuation and get ligatures automatically. None of which is possible
in Word.
(Has anyone else found that field display has become glacial on a Mac
Pro? Maybe this is my version of the curse of borked Rosetta from
Quicktime 7.2.)
I'm on 11.3.7 of Office, where, of course, Word still reports 11.3.5.

So I guess your sub and super styles have some unfortunate side-effect
on the leading. May I assume they are correctly specified as character
styles? I doubt you could do otherwise, but that would be a mechanism
for throwing the leading a curve ball. [1]

If it is really bugging you, mail me a sample. I'll see what it does
here.

1. Note to Clive: Careful avoidance of cricketing terms.

 

[John McGhie]

I think your line spacing is a little under-done. The line height for most
fonts should be 120 per cent of the font height. If you are going to raise
3, I would be inclined to go to a line spacing of 15.

Yes, something did change (between X and 2004). X used the old Quartz text
rendering engine from Apple OS 10.1. 2004 uses the newer ATSUI Unicode
rendering engine. The metrics are slightly different.

ATSUI actually does a better job: you might try putting everything back to
standard: using a line height of "Single" or "At least" and the default
super and subs, and see whether you can live with the result

Hope his helps

In text with subscripts and superscripts, I have been using exact line
spacing since Word 1 on the Mac to avoid line spacing changing whenever a
subscript or superscript is used. Because the built-in super and subscripts
give very anemic looking results, I use my own sub and superstyles with the
font size reduced to 8 pt for 10 pt fonts and the character raised 3 pts and
lowered 2 pts respectively for subs and supers. With the 10 pt font, I use
an exact line spacing of 13 pts.

In the current version of Word (11.3), this seems to no longer work. I get
variable line spacing whenever a sub or super is used. The effect is very
obvious in Print Preview. The line spacing does seem to remain constant
with the built-in subs and supers. But this leaves me with the choice of
ugly line spacing or ugly subs and supers.

Is this a peculiarity of my system or did something really change recently
with the way Word handles exact line spacing?

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John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
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