Why does pressing enter produce two spaces instead of one?

Format>Spacing is set to 1. Yet, when I press enter after text it produces a DOUBLE space. I have to press shift AND enter to produce the single space which is a huge inconvenience. What is going on?

You are using the Text body paragraph style, which by default is set to make additional space between paragraphs. (This paragraph style is automatically applied as “next style” after headings.)

Modify the style:

  • Press function key F11
    The styles panel should appear as the right side panel.
  • Make sure that paragraph styles (leftmost icon) is selected in the tool row at the top of the panel.
  • Select Automatic in the bottom dropdown box.
  • Find Text body in the list. Right click and select to modify it.
  • Click the Indent and spacing tab
  • Set spacing above/below to zero.
  • OK
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And, in addition, don’t use routinely Shift+Enter. This combination insert a line break which is not the same as a paragraph break.

The formatting unit of formatting in Writer is a paragraph. A line break doesn’t end a paragraph. When you become familiar with the powerful formatting possibilities, you’ll meet difficulties and unexpected results if your text contains line breaks where a paragraph break should have been located (impossibility to format differently text before and after the break.

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