Baseline Shift with Exact Line Space

[faceman28208]

Why does Word shift the baseline downward when you specify EXACT line
spacing?

I have some fonts that have ridiculously large internal leading.
Setting DOUBLE for a 14pt font gives only 14 lines on a page with 1"
margins (compared to 21 with Times New Roman). If I do a typographic
double spacing,and set EXACT to 28 pts., Word shifts the baseline down
about 9 pt. This screws up spacing with other styles.

Is there an easy way to compensate?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You might experiment with the Compatibility Option "Don't center 'exact line
height' lines." The wording of this is actually nonsense, since they're not
"centered" to begin with, but enabling this option does make a difference in
their position. You can also experiment with the "Suppress extra line
spacing" options.

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

 

[Stefan Blom]

But note that the option is useless if your lines contain text of different
sizes, in which case the distance between baselines will no longer be fixed.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The topic at issue here is exact line spacing, which does result in text
with the same distance between baselines.

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

 

[Stefan Blom]

I'm referring to exact line spacing too.

Note that if you select the "Don't center 'exact line height' lines" option
and then format a word larger than the others, the whole line will move
down:

text here. text here. text here. text here.
text here. text here. text here. text here.

text here. LARGE TEXT HERE. text here. text here.
text here. text here. text here. text here.
text here. text here. text here. text here.

In other words, the distance between (in this example) line 2 and 3 will be
larger, but the distance between lines 1 and 4 will be three times the
selected fixed line spacing.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Okay, I see what you're saying now. This is awful! (Makes sense, I suppose,
but it's still awful.)

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

 

[Stefan Blom]

It is certainly awful. I'm not sure it makes sense, either.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

No, not if you try to figure out what Word really means by "center." Seems
like the result when you have "Don't center" enabled is more "centered" than
otherwise.

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

 

[Stefan Blom]

Maybe that's where I'm running into problems!

To me, "Don't center..." seems to add the line spacing below the text, which
is what happens with non-fixed line spacing. I'm not sure why the option
would affect the relative position of the text line.