Barry MacDonnell'sToolbox for WordPerfect
Macros, tips, and
templates for Corel® WordPerfect® for Windows®
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Macros, tips, and
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Page updated Dec 17, 2023 | |
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How to (1) enable double-spaced text, or (2) create
other custom line spacing, or (3) automatically adjust paragraph spacing and indentation, or (4) use styles and/or keyboard shortcuts to set spacing Line spacing Automatic paragraph spacing Automatically indent the first line of paragraphs Using styles to set line height, leading, line spacing, or paragraph spacing Using shortcuts with your keyboard or toolbar Finding the current line height Line spacing in WordPerfect vs. Microsoft Word
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• enable double spaced text
• create custom line height, leading, and/or line spacing • automatically adjust spacing between paragraphs • automatically indent the first line of paragraphs • use styles and/or keyboard shortcut to quickly and easily set line spacing But first, let's take a look at some commonly used
terms, what they mean in WordPerfect, and how to use the features that these
terms reference. This little bit of background information
should help you apply spacing effectively. Tip:
If you are in a hurry to just set line spacing, skip to ■ Line height and leading Line height is the distance between the bottom (or baseline) of one line of text to the bottom of the next line. This is a measurement that is automatically set by WordPerfect for the size and type of the font in effect. Essentially, WordPerfect determines what line height is needed to make a typical line of text optimally readable. Of course, this setting may not always be what is optimal or desirable in a given document or specific location, so WordPerfect gives you several ways to manually adjust the distance between lines of text. Practically speaking, text should have enough leading
(rhymes with wedding) — or white space — between the lines for
that particular font and font size so that your eye can easily find
its way to the next line in the paragraph. Leading adjustments will, of course, affect the spacing between lines, the same as adjusting line height. I think leading is a useful feature for small blocks of text in a document to "tweak" the visual effect, as when you use longer lines or if you use a different font for a special effect, and you need a little more spacing. Leading is typically a more granular, fine-tuning adjustment, while line height is more typically used for adjusting larger blocks of text. Incidentally, many typography references suggest that the ideal line height for normal lines of less than about 65 characters and spaces is 1.2 times the height of the "m" character. But again, WordPerfect takes care of this for you (via information embedded in the font itself), and most of the time this works well. However, the longer the line — especially if it is longer than about 70 characters — the more leading should be used. Some use 1.3-1.5 times the normal line height, or even more, but you are the final judge of these things. How it looks — and how easily it reads — is the final test. Experiment to see what works best. Here are some things to consider: • More leading is especially needed with any of these text types: fully justified, italicized, bold, all-cap, or text set in a script font or in reverse type (e.g., white on black). Too little leading makes such lines more difficult to read than normal, left-justified ("flush left"), upper-and-lower case text. Headlines, on the other hand, might actually require less leading. • To manually adjust line height to a preferred fixed (or minimum) amount, use one of the following two methods. Each method (or both) can be used on the same section of text, but you probably will tend to use just one of them in a document.
• These settings will take effect from the current cursor location forward, unless and until a new setting takes effect later in the document or until any newly inserted [Ln Height] or [Leading Adj] codes are deleted in Reveal Codes. • You can also change the line height and/or leading of just a selection of text. This is particularly useful for quotations and headlines. [See Footnote 1 for some tips on using this procedure on a segment of text inside a paragraph containing other text with a different line height and/or leading value.]
■ Line spacing Line spacing in WordPerfect is simply a
multiple of line height. When you increase line height for a given font and font size, you obviously increase the spacing (or perceived leading) between lines. (This is one reason why you might see the terms line spacing and leading used almost interchangeably in reference books.) In WordPerfect you can set a this value very easily with the Line Spacing feature. It removes the small burden of calculating line height and/or leading when you simply need to double space or triple space a document (or set some other common fraction such as 1.5 space). Think of it as a quick and easy "automatic multiplier."
For example, double spacing is simply achieved by setting the value to 2.0. This value tells WordPerfect to use twice the normal line height — the value WordPerfect has automatically set for that font and font size (or to any custom value you may have set with the procedures above). If you type 1.5 you will get one and a half times the current line height, and so forth. Most users probably will use line spacing rather than line height to achieve double or triple spacing (or some fraction of these), since, as noted, it does not require any extra calculations on your part. On the other hand, line height and/or leading might be more useful to "tweak" certain parts of a document, for the reasons given in the previous section. ¤ You can quickly set several common line spacing values -- single, double, and 1.5-line spacing -- with keyboard shortcuts or toolbar buttons, as described in the section below. ¤
You can set line spacing for just a block of text: Select the text with
mouse or keyboard, then apply the new line spacing to that selecton. ¤ You might notice that the program will not change line spacing (with a new [Ln Spacing] code) if the document is already set to the same line spacing. This is because the program is designed to remove certain unnecessary (duplicate) codes. ¤ Those familiar with Microsoft Word might want to see this section below: Line spacing in WordPerfect vs. Microsoft Word. Generally speaking, in WordPerfect a paragraph is anything that ends with a single press of the Enter key regardless of any spacing (or lack of spacing) following that key press. Even typing a single character followed by <Enter> is considered a paragraph in this context. Most of the time, the Enter key
produces a hard return code ([HRt]) — but it could produce another
paragraph termination code, such as seen in Reveal Codes with Paragraph Styles or Outline Styles. In other words it's not the space that tells WordPerfect that the paragraph has ended, it's the termination code. In any case, while typing it is
usually better to hit Enter just
once between paragraphs that you have previously set up to use a more
pleasing spacing between them (say, 1.5 lines), than to use
<Enter><Enter> to add spacing between paragraphs. The
latter method typically produces too much between-paragraph spacing,
especially
for typeset documents where such wider spacing tends to look
amateurish. Tips ☼ You can globally remove extra adjacent hard returns in a document with a macro such as DelExtraHR.wcm here.) ☼ You can "close up" ("shrink") the single full-height line space between a Heading style
(or other paragraph style) and the immediately following paragraph
(even if that "paragraph" is just a blank line) by simply editing that
paragraph style: See "Reduce spacing between a paragraph Heading style and the following body text (and other paragraph style tips)" here.
[You can use that technique even if you do not use automatic paragraph
spacing — i.e., if you wish to continue using multiple presses of the Enter key to separate paragraphs.] Automatically increase or decrease spacing between paragraphs To set automatic line spacing between paragraphs [1] Click Format,
Paragraph, Format. With this setting you only need to press Enter
once between each paragraph. If you wish to set this as your default for new documents see here. Examples • If line spacing is set at 1.0, specifying a
1.5 for "Number of lines" will automatically insert an extra half line
between each paragraph of text when you terminate those paragraphs with
the Enter key. • You can also decrease
spacing between body text paragraphs (e.g., with a setting of 0.9 or
similar). This is sometimes done for a block of text, or between a
change in formatting at a specific location. An additional benefit of using this feature If you add, say, an extra half line between paragraphs (e.g., a setting of 1.5 lines), and then add double or triple line spacing to the document (with Format, Line, Spacing), the paragraphs will be proportionally separated, rather than have (in the case of using two or three presses of the Enter key) a huge white space between the paragraphs. To temporarily use normal single-line spacing inside automatically spaced paragraphs You can usually
insert single normally spaced blank lines, or start additional normally
spaced text lines, inside automatically spaced paragraphs (or outline
levels) with Line Breaks: Position your cursor in the body text (or outline level) and then insert a line break with Ctrl+Shift+L. This inserts a [Ln Brk] code in Reveal Codes. Rather than start a new paragraph like with an Enter key, a line break essentially "breaks" the current line into a new line, ignoring some special line spacing such as automatic line spacing (and some other paragraph format codes, too). This might be useful for quotations or similar single-spaced material.
In the same Format, Paragraph, Format dialog described above you can set the first line of the next paragraphs to indent a given amount — automatically — when you press Enter. This inserts a "First line indent" code [First Ln Ind] at the current cursor location. The code remains in effect until it is deleted or replaced by the same code but with a different setting. ☼ Tips • Some typography reference books suggest you should not indent five spaces, as once was the rule with typewriters. Rather, they recommend that you should set the indent to the width of an "m" character in typeset documents. As always, you should be the judge. (WordPerfect uses a half inch as a default setting for first line indentation — i.e., generally to the first tab stop — regardless of the font size.) • Further, the first paragraph on a page, or the first
paragraph after a subheading, should probably not be indented. (But the decision is yours.) The
reader has already been signaled that a new paragraph is about to
begin, so indenting at those locations is sometimes considered to be redundant. ¤ Notes and caveats A paragraph to the WordPerfect program is any text — even a single character — that
(typically) ends when you press the Enter key. Also, paragraph styles — e.g., the 5 built-in Heading styles — contain internal end-of-paragraph coding which is activated with the Enter key. 1. Both existing and new paragraph styles can be affected by setting an automatic first line indent further up in the document, thereby shifting the paragraph style's text (wherever it is applied) rightward the same amount as that first line indent setting. Presumably this is not what you want since Headings (and some other Paragraph styles) typically line up against the left margin — not with the first character of other paragraphs to which the "first line indent" has been applied. 2. Further, for the purpose of dealing with some other "normal" paragraphs where a first line indent is currently in effect (as noted in the second tip above) and may be undesireable: You can create a simple custom paragraph style to apply to such a subsequent paragraph that will immediately reset the first line indent value to zero (0.0") for just those paragraphs to which the custom style is applied. See examples of these problems and their solutions in Footnote 2. ■ Using styles to set line height, leading, line spacing, or paragraph spacingYou can create custom styles that contain line height, leading, or line spacing codes. These can then be accessed as needed in any document from the Styles drop list on a property bar or from a toolbar. For more on this topic, see here. For the current document, you can also double-click the [Open Style: DocumentStyle] code at the very top of the document to open the Styles Editor for the current document and use the Editor's menu to set any of the items above. Or, you can use File, Document, Current Document Style to do the same thing. Caution
Unless you really want your newly created custom settings for spacing to take effect in every new document, do not enable the checkbox at the bottom of the Styles Editor, "Use as default." That checkbox will cause your settings to be included in the default template which spawns all new documents. Most likely you will not want to do that. Instead, if you want to use them frequently for special purposes you could create a custom template rather than modify the default template. (For more on the default template and custom templates, see here.) ■ Using keyboard shortcuts or toolbar buttons Starting with WordPerfect 10, several of these features were assigned directly to keystroke combinations on the default (WPWin) keyboard: Ctrl+1 =
single spacing These Format features are (not surprisingly)
named Single Line Spacing, Double Line Spacing, and 1.5 Line Spacing,
and are found under the Format category in the Keyboard Shortcuts
dialog (Tools, Settings, Customize, Keyboards tab, <select name>,
Edit. However, before making any modifications -- e.g., to change a shortcut or add a custom one -- you might want to read the relevant information about keyboard assignments). Note As mentioned above, the program will not change line spacing (with a new [Ln Spacing] code) if the document already is set to the same line spacing. This is because the program is designed to remove certain unnecessary (duplicate) codes. So if the current line spacing at the cursor position is already set to single spacing then Ctrl+1 will do nothing. Tips You can add ("assign") these Line Spacing features to shortcut keys on a
custom (i.e., separate) keyboard definition. You could also add Line Height
and Line Spacing buttons to a toolbar or property bar. See here for how to add these and other WordPerfect features to keystroke combinations, toolbar or property bar buttons, or even to the main program menu. ■ Finding the current line heightAs noted above, line height is set automatically by WordPerfect for the font and font size in effect, or you can set a fixed line height yourself. However, if you want to know the exact line height at the current cursor location, here is a macro to do it (thanks to Klaus Pfeiffer for the basic technique he posted here). To copy this macro into WordPerfect, see here.
Tip: You can use this macro to determine how much Leading might have been added at the cursor location. Play it to make two measurements of the Line Height — one on the line just above the [Leading Adj] code and one just after
that code. Determine the difference added (or subtracted) between the
measurements. This difference will be the Leading adjustment (in
inches). For some differences in applying line spacing in these two programs see Cindy's 2005 post on WordPerfect Universe here (and for convenience, mirrored below:) "Regarding things like changing line spacing, please be
aware of the following difference between how Word and how WordPerfect
behave:
In Word, if you make a line spacing change without first selecting text, and if there are already multiple paragraphs in the document and you're not making the change to the last paragraph, the change will apply only to the paragraph where your cursor is. But if you're starting with a new blank document and you make a line spacing change, the change will apply to all subsequent paragraphs as you type them. WordPerfect always works more like the second of the two Word possibilities - that is, if you make a line spacing change (or many other types of changes) without first selecting text, the change will apply from that point in the document on, even if the change was made somewhere in the middle of a document - it won't apply only to the paragraph where your cursor is located. In both Word and WordPerfect, if you first select text and then change line spacing, the change will affect only (and all of) the selected text." For more on the basic differences between Word and WordPerfect see here. [Page top] |
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Footnote 1 [...continued from above] If I recall correctly, a change was made in an early version of WordPerfect to force certain format codes that typically affect an entire paragraph or an entire page (such as line height, line spacing, etc.) to the beginning of the paragraph or page. The codes will then affect the entire paragraph or page. This solved various format issues — but it means that in some circumstances you may have to temporarily disable this default if your new formatting does not seem to work on a segment of text that is inside a larger block of text, such as sentences inside a paragraph. (Such intra-paragraph sentences are often set off with line breaks (Ctrl+Shift+L) to tell the program not to start a new paragraph, as would happen when using the Enter key.) Here's how: Create, save, and play a simple, one-line macro with just the following command in it (if you don't know how to do this, see here) to disable automatic format code placement at the specific document location where you don't want it active — e.g., at the beginning of a segment of text that needs a leading adjustment: AutoCodePlacement(Off!)
Then, after you have (e.g.) re-adjusted the leading (presumably at the end of that segment of text) with a negative amount to close up the line height to match the remainder of the paragraph, you would create, save, and play a second macro to enable (i.e., reestablish) the automatic code placement feature again, which is its normally desirable state: AutoCodePlacement(On!)
Important: AutoCodePlacement() is a "sticky" command, so you most likely will want to be sure to enable the feature again with the second macro after editing and before you exit the document. Footnote 2 [...continued from above] Problem #1 -
Using Format, Paragraph, Format, then choosing "First line indent" to
indent paragraphs, will cause that setting to be inherited by any paragraph styles further down in the document, such as Heading styles (which are also paragraphs).
Hence, you will see something like the example in Fig. 1 where both Headings and regular paragraphs are indented (as indicated by the red underlines) ...
Fig. 1
... instead of Fig. 2, where all Headings aligned with the left margin and regular paragraphs are indented (as indicated by the red underline):
Fig. 2
Solution for Problem #1
One way to handle this problem is to force the Heading style to have a zero "First line indent" so that the style's first line of Heading text is aligned with the left margin.
However, if you try to set a Heading's "First line indent" back to 0" by editing the Heading style (a quick way is to simply double-click on its [Style] code in Reveal Codes) and then using Format, Paragraph, Format in the Heading's Styles Editor, you might notice that WordPerfect will not insert a [First Ln Ind] code in the Editor if it is the same as the current (or default) setting for that particular style formatting. The reason is that WordPerfect usually avoids duplication of format codes at the same location. Here, Heading styles are internally formatted as paragraphs, and they are treated much the same as other paragraphs. Hence, when you set a "first line indent" in the document's main text (perhaps at the top of the document), all following paragraphs — including text formatted with paragraph styles — are indented. Here's a simple trick to overcome that problem: ▸ Double-click on the heading's [Style] code to open the Styles Editor. In the Editor, insert a "First
line indent" setting at the beginning (i.e., to the left side) of all codes in the Editor's Contents
pane, using the Editor's Format, Paragraph, Format menu.
▸ Set it to any value other than zero, then click OK to return to the Contents pane — and then immediately insert another one that is equal to zero. The second code ([First Ln Ind: 0"]) will take precedence and thereby replace the first code, since it was created "downstream" from the first code. (Tip: If the program also adds a [Para Spacing] code following the [First Ln Ind] code you can delete it from the Contents pane.) ▸ Be sure to enable (tick) the Styles Editor's checkbox, "Automatically update style when changed in document" so that it will apply to all text where the heading style was applied. ▸ Exit from the Styles Editor with OK. If you bring up the Editor again you should see a [First Ln Ind: 0"] code there. Now, all Headings (of that same format style) should start at the left
margin, not at the first line indent value the other paragraphs have.
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Related tip: You can write a one-line macro that, when saved, can be played anytime inside any paragraph style's Contents pane to insert a [First Ln Ind: 0"] code with a mouse click:
FirstLineIndent (0) // (<- i.e, zero)
Open the Paragraph Style for editing by double-clicking on the [Style] code and immediately play that macro. It will insert a [First Ln Ind: 0"] code at the beginning of the Editor's Contents pane. Close the Styles Editor with OK. Tip: Note that using either the manual process or the macro to create the "first line indent" setting of 0", the change applies to the current document only. See Custom Styles for how to save it to your default template, or how to create a new custom style from scratch. Problem #2 - As noted previously the first paragraph on a page — or the first
paragraph after a heading — should probably not be indented as Fig. 3 shows:
Fig. 3
The reader has already been signaled that a new paragraph is about to begin, so indenting at those locations is sometimes considered to be redundant. (But the decision is yours.) Solution for Problem #2
To deal with this issue whenever a "first line indent" is in effect, you can create a simple custom paragraph style
to apply to such a paragraph to override the first line indent and
return that indented value to zero (0.0") for only that paragraph.
This is similar to the method in the solution for Problem #1 — but instead of editing an existing style (which you can do, of course) you can create a new custom paragraph style and simply use the trick above to add the [First Ln Ind: 0"] code into the custom style's Contents pane. (If during the process the program also adds a [Para Spacing] code following the [First Ln Ind] code you can delete it from the Contents pane.) Once the new custom style exists in the document you would simply place the cursor anywhere in the desired paragraph and apply the style to it. Since it is a paragraph style it will apply a zero first line indent to the current paragraph. Moreover, if one or more paragraphs are selected first the style will apply to all of the selected paragraphs. Note that you can also apply the custom style to one or more paragraphs of text even before you set first line spacing for the overall document (i.e., usually at the top of the document with Format> Paragraph> Format> "First line spacing"). In the example above (Fig. 3), and assuming the new style was applied to just the first paragraph following the Heading, it would produce this formatting:
Fig. 4
Tip: As noted above, this new style applies to text in the current document only. See Custom Styles for how to save the new style to your default template, and some other tips about creating and applying new custom styles. |
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