How To Double Space In Word – 4 Methods

5 days away, lets jump back into it! I wanted to cover off a topic that recently came up at work: How to double space in Word.

Before we get into the post, I want to let you know that I’ve also posted this on Medium and GitHub!

Okay, lets get started…

Introduction

I’ve recently come across a need to improve readability of Microsoft Word documents. We had an issue where a stake holder in a business had trouble reading small print and regular spaced documents. This meant we had to go through the documents we had sent over a change them to improve readability.

Before this I had never come across ‘Double Spacing’. If you haven’t either, this increases the space between lines of text. It’s particularly useful in printed documents as it makes it easy to make notes between the lines versus being crammed to either side of the paper.

How To Double Space In Word – Methods!

Lets jump into my 4 ways to implement double space in Microsoft Word…

Design Dropdown

The first method is often the simplest, it involves using the menus built into Microsoft Word. You’ll find this method below:

1. Open the Word document you want to apply the double spacing to
2. Go to Design in the main menu -> Document Formatting -> Paragraph Spacing -> Double

That’s it, you’ve now set the paragraph spacing for the entire document to double. I suppose that is the main drawback to this method, it only allows you to set the spacing for the entire document. Loosing any graduality that you might want for the spacing inside the document.

For my particular scenario, the ease of this option made it clearly the best option which is why I’ve put it first.

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Line And Paragraph Spacing

This option is great is you don’t want the same spacing for the whole document. For example, if you want to emphasise a particular paragraph, you can use this option and it really stands out.

You can follow the steps below for this:

1. Highlight the text you want
2. Home -> Paragraph -> Line and Paragraph Spacing -> Select spacing

You will now find that only the selected text is now using the new double spacing.

Modify Option

Similar to the last two options, this method allows you to set the spacing option for the highlighted text as well as the rest of the document. Really handy if you need to perform both actions and want to save time. Follow the steps below if you need this:

1. Navigate -> Styles -> Right Click ‘Normal’ -> Modify
2. From this new menu, you can set the double-spacing option you like

This option is powerful as it enables you to change a bunch of other settings right from the same menu. For example: indentations and alignments.

Shortcut Keys

I’ve saved potentially the easiest method for last. This method shows you how to add double spacing via shortcut keys instead of using the menus. Shortcuts for amazing for repetitive tasks that need to be performed quickly.

We all know the pain of making changes manually via a graphical menu and wishing it could be automated!

Follow the steps below to implement this:

1. Highlight the text or leave your cursor in the paragraph you want to change
2. Press Ctrl + 2

That’s it, really! The text you highlighted or the paragraph your cursor was in now has double spacing. You can also set single spacing by using Ctrl + 1.

Conclusion

So, now you know all the tips and trips for adding double spacing, single spacing and even one and a half spacing in Microsoft Word!

Each method is useful for a particular use case so I would recommend you try out each and find whichever works best for you.

Thank you for reading this far, I hope you found this useful!

Enjoy! 🎉