How to Quickly Add Double Spaces in Word

Anna Middleton Read more August 14, 2020

Although it’s not entirely easy to write a big document, that’s only one part of the job. When you’re writing, it’s important to format that text so others can read it with ease. Luckily, Microsoft Word has an arsenal of tools that can help with that.

How to Quickly Add Double Spaces in Word

One of the tricks to make your document as readable as possible is to add white spaces between lines of text. And if you’re not sure how to do that in Word, this article will help you learn how.

Double Spacing in Microsoft Word

With hundreds of formatting options and automated settings, it’s quite easy to make your Word document look super-neat. This is extremely useful in formal business environments, where making a clear and concise point is practically half the job done.

As mentioned above, double spacing increases the readability of your document. By not having your paragraphs look too condensed, the text becomes a welcome sight to the reader’s eyes. They won’t become overwhelmed when facing a brick wall of words and sentences.

Another practical thing with double spacing is that it leaves white spaces between the lines of text. This allows readers who are looking at a printed copy to add comments or thoughts right above the text lines.

While it’s true that adding double spaces to your text will definitely increase the number of pages, making your text as readable as possible should be your number one priority. Of course, before you start formatting your text, you first need to know where to find the double spacing option.

Adding Double Spacing to an Entire Document

For the latest versions of Microsoft Word, adding double spacing to your documents is quite easy. Just follow the procedure as explained in the steps below.

Open Word and create a new document.
Click the “Design” tab in the top menu.
Click the “Paragraph Spacing option” in the left portion of the ribbon menu.
In the drop-down menu, click “Double” from the “Built-In” section.
Your entire document should now switch to double spacing.

If you’re using Word 2007 to 2010, then this process is slightly different. You can do it by modifying an existing style or creating a new one. As the first example, you’ll see how you can modify one of the styles.

Click the “Home” tab in the top menu.
In the “Styles” group, right-click the “Normal” style.
Now click “Modify.”
In the “Formatting” section, click the “Double Spacing” icon. You can find it in the middle section of the row with paragraph icons. It’s the seventh icon from the left.
When you click the “Double Spacing” icon, the text sample in the middle of the “Modify Style” menu window should reflect that. To make sure that you’ve selected the right one, check the explanation beneath the text sample. The “Line spacing:” value should read “Double.”
If everything looks right, click the “OK” button to confirm your changes.

It’s not uncommon for people to want to keep their “Normal” style the way it is. In that case, you can create an entirely new style that will use double spacing in your paragraphs.

In the top menu, click the “Home” tab.
In the “Styles” group, click the “More options” button. It’s the small button in the lower-right corner of the “Styles” group. It looks like an arrow pointing down with a small horizontal line above.
Click “New Style.”
Now enter the name for your new style. When done, hit OK.
In the Styles section, right click on the new created style.
Click “Modify.”
As explained in the steps four to six from the previous portion of this section, click the double-spacing icon and confirm changes by clicking “OK”.

Adding Double Spacing to Portions of Your Text

After learning how to add double spacing to your entire document, it’s time to learn how to add that formatting to portions of your document.

Select the text that you want to double-space.
Click the right button on that selection.
Click “Paragraph” from the right-click menu.
Click the “Indents and Spacing” tab.
In the “Spacing” section, click the “Line spacing:” drop-down menu.
Select “Double.”
Click “OK” to confirm your changes.

Your selections should now contain that double spacing. To do this even faster, you can also follow the next few steps. It’s important to note that this process works on the older 2007-2010 versions of Word as well.

Select the text you want to have double spacing.
In the “Home” tab, look at the “Paragraph” group.
Click the “Line and Paragraph Spacing” icon. It’s the one looking like text with two blue arrows pointing up and down.
A drop-down menu will appear. Choose “2.0” to add double-spacing to your text selection.

Double-Spacing Like a Pro

Now that you know how to add double spacing to your Word documents, hopefully it will be a breeze from now on. This will make your documents both easier to read and more professional. With that sorted out, it’s time to focus on writing your text as best you can.

Have you managed to apply double spacing to your documents? How often do you use this option? Please share your experiences in the comments section below.