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Eric, why the double space on enter/carriage return


BulldogTom

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Eric,

Before the upgrade, we used to get single spacing when making a carriage return/hit enter.  Now it is double spaced.  I am guessing that you are using Word as your editor for these posts, and the great and powerful gods of Microsoft have declared that that is how the defaults should go.

Can I change the settings, just for me to have a single line when adding a carriage return?  If yes, how do I do that?

If not, can you change it globally, and if so are you willing to change it for everyone just because I don't like it the way it is now?

Thanks Eric.  Appreciate all you do. 

Tom

Newark, CA

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The Enter key creates a new Paragraph.  On the web, Paragraphs almost always are double spaced (have a bottom margin, that is, white space between paragraphs) to improve readability.  The reason that style is so common is because indentation of the first line (like in newspapers) is almost never used and not having either styling leads to a difficult-to-read monolithic slab of text with no visual separation between paragraphs.

It's pretty much standard practice for Enter to create a Paragraph. There isn't a feature to change it per-user, I'm afraid.  The only thing I could do is change Paragraph styling site-wide to remove that bottom margin for all paragraphs, which I'm reluctant to do for two reasons:

  1. I'm not sure that everyone wants it that way, like I said Enter = Paragraph is pretty standard
  2. More importantly, every paragraph in every thread would lose its bottom margin, and as a result we'd have no spacing between paragraphs, just that monolithic slab of text in every post.

Anyway, in instances where you don't want a new paragraph, what you're looking for is a "line break".  Most word processors, including Word and this site's editor have a shortcut to create a line break.  Here (and in many programs) it's Shift+Enter.  Sometimes it's Ctrl+Enter.

If your problem is that you have changed the default behavior in Word and other applications, and when you get here you're creating double paragraphs by mistake... All I can say is sorry for the frustration :unsure:

Edited by Eric
Added words.
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Leave it like it is.  I hate "monolithic slab" entries in a forum.  I personally learned to indent paragraphs, two spaces after a period and double space between paragraphs if not indented.

This way, those that chose not to learn how to properly write and compose letters or information can post and we can read it.

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