The Spacing palette

The Spacing palette contains controls for adjusting a paragraph’s line height multiple, minimum line height, leading, space before, and space after.

Normally, a paragraph comprises lines of text that are as high as they need to be to display all their characters. You can adjust the spacing of paragraph’s lines by:

You can increase the height of a paragraph’s line by adjusting the line height multiple. If a paragraph is single spaced, its line height multiple is 1.0. If the paragraph is double spaced, its line height multiple is 2.0. Increasing the line height multiple adds space above the baseline.

For passages of text, single spacing usually is not a good choice. The lines are too close together. You can make paragraphs easier to read by giving them a line height multiple of 1.1 or more.

For your convenience Pagehand provides a popup menu of common line height multiples.

To adjust a paragraph’s line height multiple:

You can specify a minimum height for each line of a paragraph. This value is expressed as an absolute value (that is, inches, points, centimeters, etc.) rather than a relative value like the line height multiple.

To set a paragraph’s minimum line height:

Leading, which takes its name from the lead strips that printers placed between lines of type, adds space below the baseline.

To adjust a paragraph’s leading:

To add space before a paragraph:

Space added before a paragraph does not appear if the paragraph is at the top of a column.

To add space after a paragraph: