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Double-spacing between footnotes

Posted: Thu Apr 04, 2019 2:02 pm
by joseph_anton
My university's style guide gives the following guidance for spacing:
Spacing throughout body of text: double spacing.
Spacing for block quotations, footnotes, and bibliographies: single spacing within each entry but double spacing between each entry.
I am having some difficulty figuring out how to specify that the spaces between my footnotes should be identical to the spaces between each line of the body of my text. My problem is that I'm not sure how to compare the units in which the spacing for the body of the text is specified (Body paragraph style / Line spacing: Lines 2) with that in which the spacing between footnotes is specified (Note Text paragraph style / Paragraph spacing below: ? in).

Obviously, I can approximate the space between each footnote in inches, but I'm not certain that it's exactly the same as the space between lines in the body of the text. Does anyone have any idea how I can get more precision on this? Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Re: Double-spacing between footnotes

Posted: Fri Apr 05, 2019 12:46 pm
by Icelander
Hi Joseph,
My problem is that I'm not sure how to compare the units in which the spacing for the body of the text is specified
You can use the same unit for both. For the footnotes you choose "Note text style" having Line spacing: Lines and Amount 2. Look at the screenshots here:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/pm6s5b0hm ... h.zip/file

Re: Double-spacing between footnotes

Posted: Fri Apr 05, 2019 1:08 pm
by joseph_anton
Hi Icelander - thanks for taking the time to put together those screenshots for me! The issue is a little more complex, as I need the footnotes themselves to be single-spaced, with double-spacing between each footnote. If I understood the directions you gave me correctly, they will result in double-spacing the footnotes themselves, which is not what I need.

The Space Below parameter looks like the most promising way to achieve this - I'm just having trouble figuring out what the gap between each line in the double-spaced body of my text is in inches so that I can use it here.

Thanks again for your input - any other suggestions would be much appreciated.

Re: Double-spacing between footnotes

Posted: Fri Apr 05, 2019 3:40 pm
by Icelander
If I had entered more text in the footnotes I would have realized that you're right. Sorry about that.

Actually, I think this is lastly just an academic question because it's pretty easy, I think, to guess how many points corresponds to one line, based on how the text and the footnotes appear on screen. You can print one page and adjust the number of points as needed. This assumes you print the final dissertation in Mellel.

Do you need to submit the dissertation in electronic form, other than PDF? Perhaps as a Word file? I don't know whether a conversion (to Word) will affect the spacing between footnotes.

Have you seen the thread "Line spacing Units"?
viewtopic.php?t=2643

Re: Double-spacing between footnotes

Posted: Fri Apr 05, 2019 3:52 pm
by joseph_anton
Thanks Icelander. Fortunately the final submission is as a PDF, so I don't have to worry about conversion to .docx or any other format.

You are absolutely correct that it's possible to approximate this fairly well by visually comparing the gap between lines versus the gap between footnotes, and this is probably what I will end up doing. But it would be nice to get more precision on this!

Re: Double-spacing between footnotes

Posted: Fri Apr 05, 2019 5:41 pm
by Icelander
it would be nice to get more precision on this
I agree. Although points allow maximal flexibility in setting the paragraph spacing, it makes sense to have additionally "Lines" as an option in the 'Note text style' pane.
Should we contact Redler with this as a feature request?

Re: Double-spacing between footnotes

Posted: Sat Apr 06, 2019 2:20 pm
by joseph_anton
I think I have managed to figure this one out. When I edited the Paragraph Styles for my note text, I was able to toggle the Line Spacing units from lines to points to see what one line was equivalent to in points in my document (1 line = 14.4 points). I then stumbled upon this nugget of wisdom on a typography website:
If you prefer setting line height in inches rather than points, divide the point measurement by 72 (there are 72 points to an inch). https://practicaltypography.com/line-spacing.html
By that reckoning, 14.4 points = .2 inches. By setting Note Text / Paragraph Spacing / Below = 0.2 inches it looks as though I now have spacing between each footnote that is exactly the same as the spacing between each line of the body of my text.

Edit: the problem with this approach is that it inserts spacing below every footnote, including instances where there is only one footnote on the page. A perfect solution to this problem would only insert space between footnotes if there is more than one note on the page.