Page 1 of 1

[SOLVED] Remove paragraph formatting

Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 10:03 am
by Sunshine
Hello, I wrote a book manuscript in e-book format, i.e., with hard returns and a space between paragraphs. I'm reformatting the book in paragraph style. I am unable to remove these spaces. If I hit Backspace, the next paragraph jumps up to join the one previous. I then have to Tab several times to move the first line to the right, and down one line.

How can I remove these spaces? I've repeatedly selected a page at a time, then chosen Single Line as paragraph format. Nothing budges.

Am I doomed to reformat a 400 page book manually?

Re: Remove paragraph formatting

Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 10:14 am
by RoryOF
Change the setting in your default paragraph style. /Format /Styles and Formatting, Press first Icon from lelft, right click on Default, lect Modify, and change the Spacing: Above paragraph and Spacing: Below paragraph settings on the Indents and Spacing tab.
 Edit: Before doing any drastic reformatting, especially if you are not familiar with the process you are using, make a backup copy of your file so that you can revert to it in case of disaster, 

Re: Remove paragraph formatting

Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 4:50 pm
by Bill
Sunshine wrote:Hello, I wrote a book manuscript in e-book format, i.e., with hard returns and a space between paragraphs.
How did you add the "space between paragraphs"? I can think of several ways this could have been done.

Re: Remove paragraph formatting

Posted: Tue Sep 03, 2013 6:53 am
by Sunshine
Hi Rory and Bill,

Changing the spacing above and below does nothing.

I added the space between by hitting Enter.

Thanks!

Re: Remove paragraph formatting

Posted: Tue Sep 03, 2013 7:16 am
by RoryOF
If you had used Styles correctly this would be a trivial task. Turn on /View /Non-printing characters (a toggle command - same command turns it off) to see what is causing your problem.

Re: Remove paragraph formatting

Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2013 2:41 am
by Sunshine
Were that I had a time machine to return and format correctly! It would also have saved me a lot of time.

The Paragraph Marker appeared after and before each paragraph, but the troubling space between remains blank, unknowable and untractable by any means so far, other than manual backspacing and tabbing.

At this rate, I will have my book reformatted by 2016.

Re: Remove paragraph formatting

Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2013 3:27 am
by Bill
Sunshine wrote:Were that I had a time machine to return and format correctly! It would also have saved me a lot of time.

The Paragraph Marker appeared after and before each paragraph, but the troubling space between remains blank, unknowable and untractable by any means so far, other than manual backspacing and tabbing.
If backspacing and tabbing removes the extra space between paragraphs, it means that the space comes from the "Spacing > Above paragraph" and "Spacing > Below paragraph" settings. Changing those settings to 0 will remove the extra space between paragraphs. Backspacing then tabbing to move the line turns two paragraphs into one paragraph which eliminates the effect of the spacing settings where the backspace and tabs were inserted. You shouldn't change the spacing using that method. There is a limit to the number of characters that one paragraph can contain.

The line spacing setting changes the spacing between ALL lines. It can not be used to change spacing between paragraphs.

You can use the ^$ regular expression in Find & Replace to remove "space" (empty paragraphs) which was inserted by pressing the Enter key.

Re: Remove paragraph formatting

Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2013 3:31 am
by Sunshine
Bill, the settings are at 0 in spacing before and after. It did nothing. Would you please explain your last sentence? It looks like Greek to me.

Re: Remove paragraph formatting

Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2013 3:34 am
by Bill
Please post a sample file for us to look at.

Look up "regular expressions" in Help.

Re: Remove paragraph formatting

Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2013 8:33 am
by RoryOF
A sample file of a few paragraphs will help sort out your problem.

Given the situation of a file which is composed of individual lines, each terminated with a paragraph mark (each line is actually a paragraph in OpenOffice terms) and each block of text (which the mind is reading as a paragraph) separated by a blank line from the next block, it is trivially simple to convert this into continuous text using styles, but until we handle an actual file sample it would be dangerous to give any instructions as these could severely damage the wrong sort of file .

The scenario I outline above is typical of scanned books downloaded in txt format.

Re: Remove paragraph formatting

Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2013 11:42 pm
by Sunshine
Thanks so much. Here is a copied and pasted sample from the book.

Re: Remove paragraph formatting

Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2013 11:59 pm
by RoryOF
Ctrl A to select all text. /Format /Paragraph, select Indents and Spacing tab. Set Spacing Above paragraph and Spacing Below paragraph to 0 in both cases.

The individual paragraph style (default) is set to 0 in both cases and appears to have direct formatting of a 6pt space below set. Ctrl A, Ctrl M would also remove this, but might also remove other desired formatting (i.e., it would do too much)

Re: Remove paragraph formatting

Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2013 12:08 am
by Bill
RoryOF wrote:Ctrl A to select all text. /Format /Paragraph, select Indents and Spacing tab. Set Spacing Above paragraph and Spacing Below paragraph to 0 in both cases.
I get the same results here. The only empty paragraph is the one below the title.

SOLVED THANK GOD

Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2013 5:50 am
by Sunshine
YES!!!!!

You guys are great. Thanks so much. The book may emerge this year!

Re: Remove paragraph formatting

Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2013 12:01 pm
by jrkrideau
Sunshine wrote:Thanks so much. Here is a copied and pasted sample from the book.
Looks good. I would not have thought of putting in the turnip. Thanks.

Re: [SOLVED] Remove paragraph formatting

Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2013 12:22 pm
by acknak
Yes! Love the recipe--made me laugh, but the best advice.

Good luck with your project.

Re: [SOLVED] Remove paragraph formatting

Posted: Fri Sep 06, 2013 8:08 am
by Sunshine
Thanks for the compliments! I spent many years collecting stories from immigrants, including my family. If you'd like to see the ebook, it's here: http://www.ukrainiansoulfood.ca

Along with sound recordings in the narrator's voice.

I'm really looking forward to publishing in hard copy.