Learning to format your document in Google Docs to get your file to look exactly how you want is an important skill to develop if you regularly use word processors.
One important formatting option that you have control over is spacing. You can control the spacing between words, lines, and paragraphs.
In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to change letter, line, and paragraph spacing in Google Docs.
Table of Contents
Letter Spacing
Changing Spacing Between Words
The quickest way to edit the number of spaces between words in Google Docs is to use the Find and Replace tool to find all spaces and replace them with the desired number of spaces.
For example, you can find and replace all single spaces with double spaces to quickly add two spaces between every word.
Here are the steps to do this:
1. First, highlight the section of text that you want to change the spacing for. If you want to change the spacing in your entire document, press CTRL + A on your keyboard or Edit>Select all from the top menu to select everything.
2. Next, press CTRL + F on your keyboard to open the find tool. Click on the three-dot menu
3. You should now see the Find and Replace dialog box open on your screen. In the first “find” box type a single space. In the second “Replace with” box, type two spaces. Then select the Replace all button
4. Every space in your file will now have been replaced with two spaces.
Kerning in Google Docs
Kerning is the spacing between characters.
Unfortunately, at this time, there is no way to change the kerning in Google Docs.
This may be a formatting option that they will add at some point in the future, but as of right now there is no way to change kerning.
Removing Extra Spaces
If you are working in a file and you begin to notice that things are unevenly spaced, you will want to get this corrected.
Sometimes people will accidentally type two spaces between some words and a single space between others.
To fix this we will again use Find and Replace:
- Highlight the text that you want to fix the spacing of, or your can press CTRL + A to select all
- Press CTRL + F on your keyboard
- Select the three-dot menu from the find tool
- Use Find and Replace to remove unwanted spaces.
- For example, if you notice some words have two spaces in between and others have one space, you may want to remove the extra space. In the “find” box type two spaces, and in the “Replace with” box type one space. When you select “replace all” it will then replace every double spaced word with a single space
Line Spacing
How to Double Space
By default, Google Docs will have a space of 1.15 lines between lines. Some people prefer a double-spaced line format.
This is very easy to do in Google Docs.
If you want to add double spacing to your document:
1. If you already have text in your file that you want to change to double spacing, highlight the section that you want to change the spacing of, or press CTRL + A to select everything. If you haven’t started typing yet, you can skip this step
2. In the toolbar select the Line & paragraph spacing button
3. From the drop-down menu select Double
4. You will now see that you have double spacing between every line in your document
Paragraph Spacing
If you want to adjust the line spacing between paragraphs that can also be done through the Line and paragraph spacing option in the toolbar (you can also access these settings through Format>Line & paragraph spacing).
There are two options for paragraph spacing:
- Add space before paragraph
- Add space after paragraph
You can select the appropriate one depending on whether you want to add a space before or after your paragraphs.
Custom Spacing
There is also a custom spacing option in Google Docs if you want more control over the exact spacing of your file.
To access the custom spacing settings:
1. Select the Line and paragraph spacing button in the toolbar or select it through Format>Line and paragraph spacing
2. In the drop-down menu select Custom spacing
3. From here you can enter custom line spacing rules and custom paragraph spacing rules for both before and after the paragraph. Select Apply when you are finished
Closing Thoughts
As you can see, there are a number of spacing options that you can adjust in Google Docs. Learning how to adjust these settings and get your document to look the way that you want is an important part of learning to use this program.
If you are confused about any of the steps that I have covered, make sure to watch the video which should make things more clear!
More Google Docs Tutorials:
How to Change Page Orientation
How to Save
How to Change Horizontal Line Thickness