I don’t get this. The way I understood it is that points are an absolute unit of measure 72 of which equal one inch.
So, with my old word processor it all made sense. I would set the font to 12 points, set the line spacing also to 12 points or to AUTO (which would automatically set it to the largest font in the line) and I would neatly get 6 lines per inch. If I set the line spacing to 18 pts I get the 4 lpi regardless of the font size. Up to here it all makes sense.
Now, with WORD97 I am confused. Setting the font size does change the font size as expected BUT the paragraph formatting, line spacing does not have an AUTO setting. Now, if I set it to (say) 12 points, it is not an absolute measurement but it varies with the size of the font.
Can anyone explain this to me? How can i set it to an absolute spacing?
Try looking under Format, Paragraph. Set Line Spacing to Exactly, and then try specifying the spacing under “At”.
I found this by looking in the Word help under “line_space”, with the underscore. This is Word 2000, so your version may be different.
Actually, 1 pt is exactly 0.013837 inches, as defined by the American Typefounders Association in 1886 (see National Bureau of Standards Circular 570 (1956)).
Arjuna, what you say makes perfect sense to me. I set the line spacing to EXACTLY X points and it works. Now I feel like a fool because I would swear that is what I was doing all along and it didn’t work. Oh Well! let me see if I can figure out what I was doing wrong.
I believe in the context of WORD they define a point as 1/72 " (not that it makes a huge difference).
I think the original Mac was the first system to round a point to 72 per inch, in the interest of programming simplicity. This was also the screen resolution. It’s pretty standard in computer-land these days
Good luck with Word- it’s a fight everytime I try to go against what a Microsoft product thinks is the “right way” to do something.
