Author Topic: Paragraph spacing with styles  (Read 2543 times)

notthatamanda

Paragraph spacing with styles
« on: August 27, 2019, 11:58:40 PM »
I'm crunching my Word Document through the D2D meatgrinder.  For the ebook I put the title, copyright blurb and Thank you on one page.  I want a double space between each of these elements and I can't make it work. Using styles, I've tried every combination of spacing sizes and even as a last resort, the dreaded extra paragraph return.  Nothing helps.  I'm ready to chuck the laptop at the wall.  If anyone has any ideas, please help.   It's not absolutely crucial but it's the first thing people will see on the look inside and now I just have to make it work or it will bug me forever.   Thanks.
 

Lynn

Re: Paragraph spacing with styles
« Reply #1 on: August 28, 2019, 01:30:57 AM »
That stuff can be so tricky to figure out when the things that should work don't work. I feel your pain! :)

Things that you can try, if you haven't already:

- Create a new paragraph style and apply it, with the spacing you want. Don't use any of the defaults, like Normal, edited.

- Highlight the text you want to style, and "Clear All" styles. Then put the new style on the text.

- Don't highlight the text, make sure your cursor is at the beginning or within the paragraph you want to style, and apply a new style you've created for it.

- Make sure in the paragraph settings for the style you don't have the "Don't add space between paragraphs with the same style" checked or grayed out

- Save the document as an html file and open it and look at the text to see if the problem is in how Word is telling the document to format itself or if maybe it's a D2D issue

- Make sure you use the show/hide formatting so you can see if you have paragraph returns between those lines or line breaks

If I think of anything else, I'll add it, but those are the only things I can think of right now that don't involve copy-pasting the whole thing to a new Word document.
Don't rush me.
 

RPatton

Re: Paragraph spacing with styles
« Reply #2 on: August 28, 2019, 01:35:40 AM »
If I am reading this correctly, you want the space between the paragraphs not the lines, right?

If so, then you need to increase the spacing after. You can do this with styles in Word, but you have to select the format drop down and paragraph to get to that granular level. Just double your point size and you'll get double spacing after paragraphs.

If you want double spacing between each line in the paragraph, then you need to use line spacing at exactly and use a point size that is double the size of the point size you have listed.

I haven't used D2D, so I can't say whether you can customize styles through them or if you have to bring in custom styles, but I find that using ems for the CSS works best. If you can build a basic CSS, all you need to do is worry about putting in the styles.


Here's some basic styles I built for a CSS. The Body is the default. fm-para is a basic paragraph no changes, fm-paralast is with spacing between paragraphs, fm-paradouble is with double spacing between each line.

Code: [Select]
body {
    font-size: 1em;
    line-height: 1.1;
    margin: 0 2% 0 2%;
    padding: 0;
    border: 0;
    outline: 0;
    font-family: Bookerly, Georgia, Palatino, Baskerville, "Times New Roman", serif;
    }

.fm-para {
font-weight : normal;
font-style : normal;
font-size : 1em;
line-height : inherit;
margin-top : 0em;
text-align : left;
margin-bottom : 0.2em;
}

.fm-paralast {
font-weight : normal;
font-style : normal;
font-size : 1em;
line-height : inherit;
text-align : left;
margin-bottom : 1em;
margin-top : 0em;
}

.fm-paradouble {
font-weight : normal;
font-style : normal;
font-size : 1em;
line-height : 2em;
text-align : left;
margin-bottom : 1em;
margin-top : 0em;
}
 

notthatamanda

Re: Paragraph spacing with styles
« Reply #3 on: August 28, 2019, 02:40:50 AM »
Thanks, I'm crunching the word document through D2D into an epub and I was editing normal to make a new style.  I'll try to make a completely new style and see if that works.  Thanks for the suggestion.
 

notthatamanda

Re: Paragraph spacing with styles
« Reply #4 on: August 28, 2019, 03:12:35 AM »
It still doesn't look right on the D2D previewer.  I'm unable to upload a new file to Amazon now, for some reason, to check it on there.  That has me worried, it's a couple of weeks before the block out for the preorder file.

Thank you for giving me the code but I am not up for the challenge of learning how to do that right now.
 

Jeff Tanyard

Re: Paragraph spacing with styles
« Reply #5 on: August 28, 2019, 06:20:40 AM »
Are you using D2D's epub editor to make changes?  If not, then you could try that instead of fiddling with Word.  You could also just send D2D an email explaining your problem and asking for help.
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Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy (some day) | Author Website
 
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notthatamanda

Re: Paragraph spacing with styles
« Reply #6 on: August 28, 2019, 06:22:18 AM »
Thanks, I'll load up the latest file tonight and see if it works.  If not I can ask D2D.
 

notthatamanda

Re: Paragraph spacing with styles
« Reply #7 on: August 28, 2019, 11:39:11 AM »
The rest of the book looks fantastic.  The back matter too.  Ironic that I tried to eliminate some pages for the sake of the reader getting a couple more pages of the actual story for the look inside and ended up with this silliness.  I think I'm leaving it though.  I can't risk messing anything else up.   Thank you all who tried to help.
 

Lynn

Re: Paragraph spacing with styles
« Reply #8 on: August 28, 2019, 12:21:39 PM »
You don't happen to have some section breaks still showing up between the parts that are stopping space below and above the paragraphs from showing up in the converted book, do you? (Section breaks get stripped out by a lot of formatting software.)

You can see these in Word if you turn on the show/hide formatting. It's the paragraph like symbol in the icon menus.
Don't rush me.
 

notthatamanda

Re: Paragraph spacing with styles
« Reply #9 on: August 28, 2019, 08:03:18 PM »
I'll check for that later.  If that's it that could be fabulous.  Thanks for the suggestion.
Amanda
 

Guerin

Re: Paragraph spacing with styles
« Reply #10 on: August 06, 2020, 02:20:13 AM »
It still doesn't look right on the D2D previewer.  I'm unable to upload a new file to Amazon now, for some reason, to check it on there.  That has me worried, it's a couple of weeks before the block out for the preorder file.

Thank you for giving me the code but I am not up for the challenge of learning how to do that right now.

Rather than uploading to Amazon to check your formatting, download Kindle Previewer 3 and use that to check the formatting of your document.

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