[Bear[_2_]]

Doug:

All the options we're talking about are available to you through the Format
Paragraph command.

When you type and type until your text is two or three lines long (without
having pressed Enter) the space between the lines is defined by the Line
Spacing value.

When you type one line, then press Enter to create a new paragraph, the
Spacing Before value determines how much space there is between the last line
of the previous paragraph and the first line of the new paragraph.

There's a big difference between letting word wrap create multiple lines and
pressing Enter to create multiple paragraphs. The paragraph definition
applies to all the lines in a given paragraph.

When you press Shift+Enter, you're not creating a new paragraph. You're just
forcing a new line in the same paragraph. In effect, you're overriding the
automatic word wrap. But the space between the lines is still controlled by
the Line Spacing value, because you're still in the same paragraph.

You should click the Show/Hide button (the one with the backwards P) to show
the nonprinting characters. You'll see that paragraphs end with a mark that
looks like a backward P, but line breaks (Shift+Enter) look like a "left
arrow with a tail."

Finally, the paragraph settings you apply by clicking Format Paragraph
only apply to the current paragraph. To affect the settings for all
paragraphs, you have to work with styles.

Notice the style name of the paragraph you're currently in. If you click
Format Style, you'll see that same style selected and ready to examine or
modify. If you click Modify Format Paragraph, you'll come to the same
dialog box you saw when you clicked Format Paragraph. (The exact command
path may be different for Word 2003 and 2007.)

However, when you change the Spacing Before value for the style, you change
the space before for ALL paragraphs in your document that use that style.

Bear
--
Windows XP, Word 2000