Negative Capability Press Poetry Blog

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single- and double-spacing on the web...

First of all, a caveat:  I only speak geek, so bear with me while I try to explain this in normal English.

Web pages typically are formatted in HTML, which is only important to this conversation in that in HTML, paragraphs are typically formatted so that they are single-spaced within themselves and double-spaced between themselves.  What that means is, simply, that this paragraph you are now reading is single-spaced, but there is an empty line between it and the ones before and after it.  You get that "double" space by hitting the Enter key.  Any time you hit the Enter key, you get a double space.  That's just the way it is.

It is worth noting here that the CommentPress system works by putting those comment boxes with paragraphs, so every time you have a paragraph break, you get a comment bubble thing.

However, if you hold down the Shift key while hitting Enter, it will create what is called a line break
like this. 
The Shift-Enter combination causes the line to break but doesn't create a new paragraph.

These same concepts work in the background in Word.

The easiest way to do this is to type the poem originally with line breaks instead of paragraph breaks, but that's kind of annoying.

I hope this helps!