"Automatic" paragraph spacing

[bubbakittee]

In Word's paragraph spacing dialog, I see that there is an option to
make the spacing "automatic"). This is in the "space before" and
"space after" fields.

What does "automatic" mean ?

thanks

bk

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

If you use the Auto space before and after a paragraph you only get one or
the other of them, and not both, depending upon where the paragraph is and
what comes before or after it.

If the paragraph is at the top of the page, the autospace before is ignored.
If you have a table between two paragraphs that are formatted with autospace
before and after, you will get a space before and after the table (which is
what you would normally require.

I am not sure exactly what it is, but the autospace is slightly more that 12
points.

In most cases, setting Autospace before and after seems to work quite well.

Unfortunately, the most common setting (and the very worst) seems to be to
have no space before or after and use the enter key to insert an empty
paragraph to get spacing between paragraphs. Many practitioners of that
method seem to be also unaware of the purpose of the tab key, or for that
matter any of the capabilities of the most basic word processor and the
documents that they prepare might just as well have been created with a
typewriter.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com

 

[bubbakittee]

Unfortunately, the most common setting (and the very worst) seems to be to

have no space before or after and use the enter key to insert an empty
paragraph to get spacing between paragraphs.  

Well, as I mentioned in another post, that it exactly how it was done
by the MS people who wrote the Word manual (back in the days when
there was a manual).

They weren't entirely brain-dead. They defined a style called
"ParagraphSpace", or something like that, and then you can make global
chnages by changing this style.

 

[bubbakittee]

In most cases, setting Autospace before and after seems to work quite well.
Your answer helps -- I learned something.

But the "auto" setting doesn't help me.
Not enough control over spacing.

Thanks, anyway

bk

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

This may be true of Auto spacing which I've never used, but it is also true
to some extent of specific spacing. By default, Spacing Before is always
suppressed at the top of a page and Spacing After at the bottom of a page.
The exception is after a hard page or column break or a section break. It
can be suppressed after a hard page or column break (but not a section
break) by enabling the appropriate Compatibility option. And Spacing Before
and After between paragraphs are combined by default in recent versions; in
order to prevent it, you have to enable the Compatibility option "Don't use
HTML paragraph auto spacing." Perhaps if you set the spacing to Auto, this
would still happen even with the Compatibility option enabled.

Auto spacing (as the reference to HTML suggests) is one of the features
introduced in Word 2000 to make Word more suitable for creating Web pages, a
truly horrible idea.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org