Leading Mismatch in Paragraph Lines

Question

I was struggling with this for a while and could not find the answer anywhere online. It wasn't until I was gathing screenshots for this post that I discovered my answer. When you select your paragraph and adjust the leading, sometimes the bottom line will refuse to tighten up with the rest of the lines. The way to fix this is to simply select the following line after the paragraph when adjusting the leading to be tighter.

Edit: Barb Binder has the more correct answer. See her reply below:

Mike Witherell · Accepted Answer

Well, you are close, but... (Barb answered faster than me! Go, Barb, go!)

When a paragraph has a different last line leading, it is because the hard return character, often invisible, has not been selected when changing the leading.

Simply turn on Type > Show Hidden Characters.

When you select a paragraph, make sure you select that last hard return pilcrow character. Now set the leading, and all the lines will match.

Better technique: Select a whole paragraph with the type tool with 4 clicks to select the whole paragraph, including the invisible hard return.

Better yet technique: Learn to make paragraph styles that include all your necessary attributes and apply paragraph styles to paragraphs. It is much faster and gives more complete control.

Another possibility that might help you: Preferences > Type > Apply Leading to Entire Paragraphs

Barb Binder · Answer

Your solution works because as you pick up a few lines of the next paragraph, you are also selecting the pilcrow ¶ at the end of the previous paragraph. The pilcrow can also accept formatting, even if you can't see it. If it has a different leading value, then it's going to cause the problem that you're showing.

These would also prevent this from happening:

Work with Type > Show Hidden Characters enabled so that you can see you have selected the entire paragraph—including the pilcrow ¶—before applying leading.
Use paragraph styles and not manual formatting, which are always applied to the entire paragraph.
Enable Apply Leading to Entire Paragraphs in Prefs > Type to keep this from ever happening again.

~Barb

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