However, at times, all line spacing is referred to as leading, which can cause some confusion. Technically, the amount of line spacing that is greater than the font size is called "leading," after the practice of inserting strips of lead between lines to increase spacing in manual typesetting. More often, text is easier to read if the line spacing is greater than the font size. Text in which the font size and line spacing are the same - for example, 12/12 - is "set solid" and relatively rare. For instance, text set in 12/14 uses a 12 point font with 14 points of line spacing. Since both typeface size and line spacing are usually thought of together, a standard notation has evolved to express them. Like typefaces, line spacing is usually measured in points (one point is about 1/72nd of an inch).
At the same time, if the line spacing is too great, the body of text is hard to read.īecause line spacing is so important in typography, specialized terms have gathered around it. It is defined as the space between two baselines in a body of text - that is, between the imaginary line at the bottom of capital letters and letters like "m" or "o." Usually, typographers want enough line spacing so that letters that have ascenders (strokes that extend above the height of "m" or "o" such as "b" or "d"), or descenders (strokes that fall below the bottom of "m" or "o" such as "g" or "y) do not interfere with legibility.
Line spacing is one of the main tools in typography. What follows is the results of my experiments to recreate that knowledge. The central mystery is: how does Writer control line-spacing by default? Until you know, working with its line-spacing tools requires guesswork. Somewhere in the transitions from a private company to Sun Microsystem's property to a free software project, exact knowledge of the line-spacing tools was lost.
However, by far the least understood of these high-end tools is Writer's ability to adjust line-spacing. For this reason, it includes a number of tools for tweaking lines of text, including Tools > Language > Hyphenation and the tools for adjusting character width and letter space for individual characters. Designed to write long documents, Writer is in many ways a document processor comparable to FrameMaker, suitable for designing books and dissertations while falling short of a complete desktop publishing solution. The fact that Writer is more than a word processor is an open secret.
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