Forum Discussion
Best practice - Normal style and paragraph spacing
While most of my time is spent designing and creating documents in Adobe Indesign I do often need to create documents in Word for people in our educational organisation to then go on and change themselves in future, for instance letterheads, report templates and the like. It makes sense to me to set before/after paragraph spacing within the Normal style so it can be controlled across the document but time and time again I find examples of document templates from universities for example or even Microsoft's own template library where spacing of Normal is simply left at 0, and instead space is created using double paragraph returns/breaks.
My question is why is that, why do these organsiations not use it as intended? What is the best practice when it comes to spacing?
The only times I run into issues setting spacing after is within tables. If Normal has spacing after, a cell within a table will look like it has a large bottom margin because the space is included.
4 Replies
First, templates from Microsoft are not always (or even often) good examples of how to use Word features. They are generally prepared by graphical designers trying for a certain "look" that has nothing to do with how Word works for the general user.
I have long used the Body Text style as my standard body style and the base for many other styles.
That has space after set as well as inter-line spacing. I want my documents easy to read. I generally use block paragraphs, so space before or after is essential. With headings I sometimes use both. If I used first-line indents, the space-before/-after would not be as crucial I usppose.
Changing the normal style can have unexpected consequences. Changing the Body Text style has no effect built-in. If I apply Body Text style to a table, I will sometimes create a separate Table Body Text style. If someone else creates a Table in one of my documents or templates, the style inside the table will be the Body Text style (which does have space-after). This is also true if I apply a Table Style to them, even though the table styles are not based on Body Text.
If you expect users to create tables, you could (1) include a Table Body Text style, and/or include Quick Tables that are properly formatted and point users to them.
See also: How styles in Microsoft Word cascade by Shauna Kelly You can break that style-dependency to some extent by redefining other styles.
Look at [Quick] Style Sets and Themes. Perhaps include information about them when you produce templates for someone else. [Quick] Style Sets and Word Themes in Microsoft Word
To add to what Charles has said, you can use the Normal style to change certain aspects of formatting, such as the font and font size. This is a good way to make use of the fact that Normal is the based-on (or "parent") style for many other styles. Beyond that, leave the Normal style alone, and use Body Text for most of the text in the document.
Charles_Kenyon Thanks for sharing your workflow there Charles. I'm just attempting to use something similar now. One thing I have noticed/run into is the fact that when you use Normal and then apply bullets to a paragraph, it automatically applies the "List Paragraph" style, which has the 'no spacing for the same paragraph option' for example, now if you use a self created "Body Text" and apply bullets, "List Paragraph" isn't automatically applied. You have to manually change it to use it. Not a deal breaker but annoying.
For the Tables problem, you can use Quick Tables that are preformatted.
Consider setting up your own styles for bullets and using those styles.
- How to Control Bullets by Shauna Kelly.
By the way, double paragraph breaks (empty paragraphs) make editing Word documents much harder. See Why You Should Press Enter Only Once at the End of Each Paragraph by Shauna Kelly.
