73. Word: Start a New Line without Starting a New Paragraph

When you’re typing into a Microsoft Word document and you press the Enter key, Word starts a new paragraph. In old versions (Word 2003 and 2002), it looks indistinguishable from a new line: the new paragraph appears immediately below the last one. In Word 2013, 2010 and 2007, however, some extra space is added between the two paragraphs. This can be altered of course by changing the format of your paragraphs but if you like the extra spaces, read on:

You might like the approach taken by these newer versions – it does make a document look a little neater – but it has a drawback. If you’re trying to type an address over several lines, you’d prefer it to look like a single block without gaps between each line. The same might apply if you’re typing list of items – you don’t really regard each item in the list as a separate paragraph, so you don’t want them all separated by white space.

What can you do about it? Well, the solution depends on whether or not you’ve already typed the text in question:

* If you’re just about to type the text – the address or the list – don’t press Enter at the end of each line. Instead, press Shift+Enter. That will give you a new line, but without starting a new paragraph, so you don’t get that enormous space between the lines.

* If you’ve already typed the text in question, begin by highlighting the entire address or list. Next, make sure the Home tab is selected on the Ribbon and move your mouse up to the ‘Styles’ section where you’ll see a wide white box containing items such as ‘Normal’, ‘No Spacing’ and ‘Heading 1’. In this box, click on No Spacing. This removes the extra space that was added between all those lines.

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