Line spacing in Indesign

[Mahisha5EBC]

Hi guys, 

I'm using the font Calibri and size 11 in Indesign, but I need like spacing of 1.5 for my dissertation. What number do I put in for a line spacing of 1.5? 

[Derek Cross]

One line space would be plenty – 11/22pt (IMO)

[Dov Isaacs]

Unlike word processing software such as Word which does have the concept of line spacing, InDesign uses text size and leading. Size is the “point size” of the text and leading is the total space the line of text occupies including interline spacing.

Typically and traditionally with professional layout software (such as InDesign), what is referred to as single spacing results in the leading being specified 1.2 times the text size. Thus, for single spacing of 11 point text size, the leading would be 13.2 points. If you want 1.5 spacing, you would multiply that value by 1.5 yielding leading of 19.8 points. (If you were using a 12 point text size, your leading would be 14.4 points for single spacing and 21.6 points for 1.5 spacing.)

Note that in Word, you can get into real trouble when you specify spacing in terms of single, double, etc. spacing. Word oddly looks at the entire font in which the text is formatted and based on some secret sauce formula, determines what the interline spacing should be. To get consistent results in Word, you must specify the line spacing (in the paragraph properties) as exactly a particular point size, using the same calculation that you would use in InDesign!

Good luck with your dissertation. From personal experience, I know how much work preparing such a document can be, especially if you are dealing with real sticklers who will always try to find a technical “issue” with how you prepared the document compared to their standards.

[Barb Binder]

Here is a quick primer on how to calculate the leading (line spacing is called leading in publishing): we often begin by setting body type at typesize + 2 points. From there, we can increase or decrease the leading based on what we are looking for and to take into account other factors such as line length and the x-height of the type (the x-height is the height of the lower case alphabet in that typeface.)

For you, I'd start at 11/13 (11 point type on 13 point leading). If you want a line spacing of one and half, try 13 + 6.5 = 19.5.  I suspect you will be better off with less leading, but play with it a bit and see what you think. 

~Barb 

[Derek Cross]

IMO; Keep it (the leading) simple!

Unless you have a special reason for using InDesign to write your dissertation, I suggest you keep to a word processing application, such as MSWord.

(Horses for courses.)

[Dov Isaacs]

Derek,

FYI, we have had customer complaints about PDF files coming from Word because it does not give exact point sizes and spacing as expected due to Microsoft's insistence in using 1/96 internal measurements. Thus, only text point sizes that are evenly divisible by 3 actually come out correct for print and/or PDF. 12 points does yield 12 point output, but 11 points yields 11.04 points and 10 points yields 9.96 points. In some cases, government contract bids and student papers authored in Word have been rejected over this silliness (obviously someone was using some preflight checker to ascertain the text size as being exactly 10 point, for example). The only workaround was to use FrameMaker or InDesign or some other software.

Yes, this is totally irrational, but …

[Derek Cross]

I don't think we're so punctilious in the UK!

[Dov Isaacs]

You are probably right, especially with measurements such as furlongs per fortnight! 🙄

[LucasFonts]

In order to simulate Calibri in MS Word (Win) with 1.5 linespacing exactly, you will need to use 10.98 pt on 20.16 pt line to line distance. I found these numbers by saving a PDF from MS Word (once with Save As > pdf, and once with Acrobat) and then opening that PDF in Adobe Illustrator, where I re-set the text to fit.

That is quite generous indeed, but I think these are rules for dissertations so that the reader can write between the lines. Also the line length will probably be long, and the longer the lines, the more linespacing you need.

I designed Calibri so that it works well with the default linespacing in Word and InDesign. Which needed some discussion, because Verdana - a previous default font - is drawn huge. The default linespacing in InDesign is +20%. Which works well for most fonts, when lines are not  too long, but some other fonts of mine only look good with 130% line to line distance.

In my long and bi-platform experience, I would rather say that Adobe normally does weird things with resolution, illustrated by the fact that the Adobe professionals above provided wrong numbers 🙂

Luc(as), type designer

[Derek Cross]

Congratulations on designing such an attractive and popular font.

10.98 on 20.16 might be accurate but I'm sure you'll agree hardly practical.

That's why I suggested 11pt on 22pt in InDesign – even a student can follow that!