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I’m having a problem with line spacing for text in a shape - specifically where a wrapped line partially overwrites / covers the first part of the line

In the example image below, the spacing between the lines is what I want (e.g. between Authentication and Authentication Failure), but for the wrapped line  - Online activity (web/mobile) - the wrapped portion partially covers the start of the line.


I can control the line spacing with the Line Height setting, and that does push the wrapped line down but also increases the space between all lines. I can also play with Space Before but that also affects all lines not just the wrapped line.

Any suggestions?

 

 

 

Hi ​@Matthew.James, thanks for your post! 

On the screenshot you have shared, it seems like you have selected the entire shape, hence why the Line height feature applies to all of the text inside it. 

However, if you specifically select the text you want to see Line height changes on, the Line height feature will target that text only. See the difference between the two approaches here: 

 

Could you please try this and let me know if you continue to have any issues?

Cheers!


Hi Zuzia

Thanks for the response and suggestion. And yes I have been managing the settings for the whole text selection in order to have consistent line spacing for all lines. I can - as you have suggested - just select the specific line(s) with the text wrapping and change the line height individually.

This does work to get the spacing I am after - thanks :-)

However it does seem to be a hack / workaround.  The behaviour is consistent with the line height being applied at a factor of around 0.6 for wrapped text. i.e.:

  • For a line height of 0.5, the ‘main’ lines are space at 0.5 but the wrapped lines are spaced at around 0.3
  • To get the wrapped lines to a visual spacing of 0.5, the line height needs to be increased to around 0.8 (just for that line)
  • Apart from being a bit hacky, this also breaks (gets reset) if someone then changes the line height to re-space the entire text block

On playing around with it, my guess is that someone put in a ‘fudge factor’ so that line wrapping looked better as a paragraph, but they sized it for line height ==1 and made it proportional without any lower bound. So as line height is decreased the wrapped line gets closer and closer until it overwrites the main line above it. Likewise if line height is increased > 1 the wrapped lines get further away.

So - I’m good for now, but someone might want to look into that further


Hi ​@Matthew.James, thank you for following up with this detailed feedback!

I am glad that the workaround provided has been helpful. I was not able to reproduce the behaviour you have described, would you mind sharing a screen recording of your experience? This will allow me to have a closer look into the issue. 

We appreciate your help and patience!


Hi Zuzia - I’ve attached a screen recording that shows the behaviour.

  • The text starts of all with line spacing of 1. You’ll not that each new line (paragraph) is evenly spaced apart and the wrapped text (the two line paragraph) sits closer to the line above it
  • As I decrease the line spacing all the lines get closer together, but the wrapped line get closer faster, and ultimately starts overlapping with the text in the same ‘paragraph’
  • Then as I increase the line spacing the wrapped line gets further away ‘faster’
  • I’m using a line spacing of 0.5 and (as you can see) that has the wrapped lines overlapping

 


Thanks for following up with these details ​@Matthew.James!

From the screen recording you have provided, it seems like the “Space before” functionality is being set to 8px, which creates its own spacing between paragraphs. The solution to this would be reducing the “Space before” option to 0, as such: 

Would you mind trying that and let me know how it goes? 

Best!


Interesting - I hadn’t noticed that effect and thought this was just for the first line (as is implied by the icon). I can see how that works now, thanks.
I thought I was using this for top margin / spacing. I’ll have to find another way to do that.

Thanks for your help.


@Matthew.James glad to hear that helped! Feel free to create a new topic if you have any questions or anything you’d like to discuss - we love hearing from everyone!