Inconsistent line spacing - how to fix?

[babag]

edit:
Investigating this further before posting I find that changing Format—>Paragraph—>Spacing—>Below paragraph seems to fix the problem below, albeit while introducing a new one. The new one is that now the existing paragraph changes have lost the desired spacing between them. How do I increase the spacing between specific lines without affecting the rest of the paragraphs and lines?

I have my line spacing looking good at 1.15. I’m trying to match an old document and have it pretty close. On a few lines, though, a word hangs on to one line but, in the old document, it’s wrapped to the next line. It seems simple enough to just place the cursor at the beginning of the offending word and hit ‘return’ to get the word to move to the next line. Problem is, however, that when I do so, the line spacing increases from the 1.15 in the rest of the doc. I haven’t been able to find a setting to correct it back to 1.15. I’ve tried both:

Format—>Spacing
Format—>Paragraph—>Line Spacing

Maybe hitting ‘return’ is causing Writer to assign a new paragraph? How do I fix this so that moving the word does not increase the line spacing?

thanks,
BabaG

[EarnestAl]

@babag

I’m trying to match an old document and have it pretty close. On a few lines, though, a word hangs on to one line but, in the old document, it’s wrapped to the next line.

Are you using the same font, size and width of paragraph area (page width minus both margins)?
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If you want to enter a line break, as opposed to a paragraph break, press Shift+Enter. This keeps the text in the same paragraph except on a new line

[babag]

Thanks for this. Didn’t know about shift+enter.

This is actually more complex than using the same font, size, and width of paragraph. It’s about a visual match. The old doc is actually a photograph of a hand-printed text. I’ve gotten it quite close but am getting stuck on the last refinements.

Process-wise, I actually went so far as to create a font out of the hand-printing so, yes, by tweaking font size, spacing, etc., I’ve been able to get very close. I don’t use Writer much so I was getting frustrated by the way the various settings were interacting.

thanks again,
BabaG

[EarnestAl]

I think the font designs for the old hot metal presses and earlier were designed on paper first and then the moulds were carved to match. Many of the long established digital fonts are based on those same designs, sometimes the names of the old designers appear in the font description.
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Maybe, there is a font to match, Garamond and Times New Roman look similar but can have different metrics, and appearance after closer inspection. Maybe try a font identification site such as WhatTheFont Font Finder - Identify Fonts by Image