Libre Writer - Line Spacing - not appearign as single space

users
#1

Hi Folks,

In Libre Writer 4.3.5.2, I wanted to change the plain text to single
spacing for all lines of text in all paragraphs. I highlighted all the
lines and then I followed both of these suggestions but it still
appears double-spaced although it says it's single spaced but isn't

How do I truly secure single spacing?

1. Select the paragraph and then go to Format, Paragraph, Indents &
Spacing tab, Line Spacing .

2. Right click to open the context menu > Line Spacing.

Thank you.

Charles.

#2

I couldn't catch exactly what are you trying to do.

Did you mean the vertical spacing among lines or the horizontal among
characters?

If you started with "plain text" why doors it have such a (double?) spacing?

What font are you using?

#3

Hi :slight_smile:
Chapter 3 of the "Getting Started Guide", the chapter about "Styles and
Templates". In MS Office their equivalent can often cause problems but in
LibreOffice the system is different and makes it MUCH easier to produce
much higher quality documents with much less effort.
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications

At the moment it sounds like you are formatting directly inside the content
of the document. For the most part, most of the document probably could do
with looking consistent and many of your headings and so on also being
consistent with each other. Future documents may well need to have the
same levels of consistency. At the moment you are maybe trying to remember
adn struggle a bit to try to force it all to behave.

Using styles, even a tiny bit, can drastically reduce the amount of direct
formatting you need to do and that can save quite a bit of time. Each time
you have to reach for the mouse to apply formatting it reduces your
productivity. Being able to keep yoru hands on the keyboard and use simple
keyboard combinations such as;

Ctrl B to switch "bold" on/off and
Ctrl I to switch "Italics" on/off and
Ctrl U to switch "Underline" on/off

along with

Ctrl x to cut (x looks a little like a pair of scissors)
Ctrl c to copy
Ctrl v to paste (v looks a bit like a downwards arrow)

and of course

Ctrl left/right arrows to skip a word at a time

All combine to make your typing much faster and with less need to break
your concentration. Touch-typing courses often suggest that it's better to
leave all the formatting until after a significant amount of a document has
been typed. This can work quite well wrt headings but it helps to be able
to apply emphasis without hunting for the mouse and then repositioning your
fingers again afterwards.

To open Styles just press F11, Then look up beside where you would normal
set your font to see the name of the style you are using in the body of the
contents: hopefully either "Text body" or "Default" and right-click on the
appropriate one in the styles pop-up dialogue-box to modify it.

I hope this helps!
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#4

One possibility is that your "lines" here are not lines of a single continuous paragraph but actually separate paragraphs or explicitly separate lines. Remember that in any word processor a paragraph is however much text is separated by pressing Enter, not necessarily what you see as a paragraph. These paragraphs may have vertical spacing set between paragraphs, either locally for the paragraphs or in their paragraph style, or there may be empty paragraphs between each of your visible paragraphs (as by pressing Enter twice in succession). Or you may have double explicit line breaks between each line (as by pressing Shift+Enter twice in succession). Situations like this can easily arise if you paste material in from elsewhere. Click the Non-printing Characters button in the Standard toolbar (or use Ctrl+F10) to toggle the display of end-of-line and end-of-paragraph markers and see what is happening.

Other possibilities are that the text is in either a section or a table cell and that these have been protected by the author. But that doesn't fit your description, since in those cases the menu items you describe should either be greyed out or missing.

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker

#5

Tom,

That was it!

Thank you!!

For all those interested, when I changed the Style Setting Box from
Text Body to Default Style, then it changed the spacing to single
spacing.

Thank you again.

Best,

Charles.

#6

Hi :slight_smile:
Brilliant! Even easier than i thought! Well found! :slight_smile: Congrats.

It sounds like it might be good to re-configure the "Text-body" style
someday, maybe - or leave it so you can switch between the 2 styles as
needed. Superb! :slight_smile:
Congrats and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#7

I *highly* recommend getting used to styles - create your own custom styles
that you can readily use. It is 100x easier than direct formatting which is
how most users use Writer. If you're doing anything more than a one page
document, having useful styles ensure that you'll get the results that you
want.

Best,
Joel

#8

I'm interested, but puzzled. Surely that could not have been the solution if the problem was as described?

o Text Body paragraph style has Single spacing by default - though you (or someone else) could well have changed this to Double: no problem.

o But in any case, the two techniques you described as not working both apply local formatting, and applying local single spacing to paragraphs with double spacing in their paragraph style *will* overrule the style and change the spacing. So the techniques that you say failed you would have worked (even though not an ideal solution).

I'm delighted that you are happy, of course - but it would be nice to know what was *really* happening.

Brian Barker

#9

My Text Body style as default has spacing below the paragraph. The Default style does not.
Steve

#10

Believe you'll find the issue here:

tdf#94464 <https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94464> --
"Text Body default line spacing too big" as "Text Body" style is using 120%
proportional line spacing with .10"/.25cm spacing below.

The default for the style needs to be reworked.

Meanwhile, the "Text body" style can be modified to change to single space
and eliminate the spacing below paragraph to have a cleaner single space use
of text body. Nuisance is that you have to reset it for each document--or
create a new style to use.

#11

Interesting - but that would still affect the appearance only if the original questioner's "lines of text in all paragraphs" were actually separate paragraphs (as I suggested), wouldn't it?

Brian Barker

#12

Aha! I hadn't recognised this. Thanks and apologies for the confusion.

Brian Barker