2

I am working with a limited amount of pages and have to write in Arial 11pt with single line spacing. Now, I noticed that the single line spacing in MS Word (which is probably what the authors of the restrictions assumed) is much narrower than the standard line spacing in LaTeX. How do I get MS Word style single line spacing in LaTeX?

I tried \singlespacing, \setstretch{1} and \linespread{1} but the line-spacing stays too wide.

A test code:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Arial}
\usepackage{setspace}
\setstretch{1}


\begin{document}
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod
tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim
veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip
ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in
voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur
sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt
mollit anim id est laborum.
\end{document}
Null
  • 1,525
Daniel
  • 1,787

2 Answers2

17

I think the setspace package is intended to increase spacing; I don't think it has options for reducing it. The simplest option here is probably a manual setting to \baselinestretch, as per page 172 of Lamport's book.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Arial}
\renewcommand\baselinestretch{0.8}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]
\end{document}

You can experiment with the \baselinestretch value to get different results (1 is the default). The result with 0.8 is hideous, so I suppose quite similar to Word.

enter image description here

Ian Thompson
  • 43,767
  • 1
    Why not \setstretch{0.8)? – egreg Sep 07 '23 at 10:10
  • @egreg --- No reason other than my aversion to loading packages I don't need. I can see that \setstretch does some other stuff aside from changing \baselinestretch, but I don't know its effect. Would \setstretch be better? – Ian Thompson Sep 07 '23 at 10:14
  • @IanThompson yes, it would be. It does things more uniformly, e.g., in footnotes and stuff. – Niranjan Sep 07 '23 at 11:08
  • 15
    The result with 0.8 is hideous, so I suppose quite similar to Word. Made my day. Please take my upvote. – Ingmar Sep 07 '23 at 11:14
  • Most of the time, a word processor (and TeX) make some assumptions about the font being used, and the text being typed. If you are using a font that has unusually tall characters (for its font size), and are typing in a language that uses accented uppercase letters, then tight single line spacing may be too crowded. The software will most likely auto-increase lines spacing, as needed, on a local bases. Not always. – rallg Sep 08 '23 at 22:28
7

You're on the right track:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{setspace}


\setmainfont{Arial}
\setstretch{0.8}


\begin{document}


Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod
tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim
veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip
ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in
voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur
sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt
mollit anim id est laborum.


\end{document}

enter image description here

For just text, you can avoid setspace by just issuing

\linespread{0.8}

in the document preamble.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}


\setmainfont{Arial}


\linespread{0.8}


\begin{document}


Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod
tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim
veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip
ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in
voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur
sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt
mollit anim id est laborum.


\end{document}
egreg
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