How to Fix Uneven Spacing in MS Word
Blinn College – Bryan Writing Center
Fall 2019
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How to Fix Uneven Spacing in MS Word
The Modern Language Association (MLA) requires that academic papers be evenly double-spaced
throughout the document, with no “extra space above or below the title of the paper or between
paragraphs” (WR 466). However, the default formatting provided by most standard Microsoft Word
software packages often inserts extra spacing before and after paragraphs. (For the purposes of MS
Word, a paragraph occurs every time you hit the Enter key.) This results in large gaps between lines in
the identification block (your name, the instructor’s name, the class, and the due date), before and after
the title, and between paragraphs. It can also adversely affect the spacing of the references on your
works cited page.
To fix uneven spacing in your paper on a PC laptop or desktop computer:
1. Select your entire document by pressing CTRL-A.
2. Under the Home tab, click the small arrow in the lower right-hand corner of the Paragraph toolbar.
The Paragraph menu will appear.
3. Under the Indents and Spacing tab, review the current settings shown under Spacing. “Figure 1:
Typical Default Paragraph Formatting” (shown below), models typical default settings for paragraph
and line spacing. The default spacing on your version of MS Word might be slightly different.
Figure 1: Typical Default Paragraph Formatting
