[Peter T. Daniels]

I can't duplicate your problem. In an ordinary paragraph, 12 pt with line
spacing set to Single, I selected the first letter and shot it up to 36.
The leading below the first line grew to accommodate the lower part of
the letter (where a descender would have been), but the leading of the
other lines wasn't affected. I then changed the spacing to Exactly 12 pt,
and all the leading shrank to 12 (including after the first line) -- but
the top of the 36 pt letter was cut off. So I went back into Paragraph
and gave it a Space Before of 18 points, and it was fine.

On Tuesday, December 10, 2013 9:48:25 AM UTC-5, Stuart Land wrote:
Thanks for the answer, Peter. However, didn't work. I have Word 2003 and 2010, and both do the same thing. I fiddled around with everything that had the word LINE in it and nothing changed. Try making a simple paragraph in 12 pt font, flush left. Make the first letter 18 pt. The space below that line will increase even though the letter is flush with the line it's on. Using EXACTLY brings the space back to normal, but also bring the larger font down just slightly larger than the 12 pt font. Increasing the font size then just make the font wider, but not taller. I'm at a loss.

On Tuesday, December 10, 2013 7:12:27 PM UTC+7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

Either that's a weird change later than Word2007, or you have some other choice
selected that's overriding the Exactly command. Go into WordOptions, scroll to
the very bottom, and check the box on the very last line. This opens up an immense, alphabetized list of additional items, through which you can search --
there's one called "don't add extra line spacing" in various circumstances, but
that extra spacing usually appears only for the specific line the larger or
raised character is in.

On Tuesday, December 10, 2013 4:17:08 AM UTC-5, Stuart Land wrote:

Hi. I have the same problem, but I don't want to use a drop cap. I just want to use a larger first letter font on the same line without the line below increasing. I start some paragraphs flush left with a larger first letter. This make the next line increase, so throws the whole paragraph off. How can I get it to not do that?

Using EXACTLY just decreases the font size to fit the line spacing, or increases all the lines in the paragraph to fit the larger font.