If you’ve ever tried to change spacing between bullet points in Word and wondered why it doesn’t work as you expected it to, you’re not alone.
Microsoft Word makes it easy to add spacing between paragraphs, but when you apply that same setting (Spacing: Before and After) to a bullet or numbered list, it doesn’t always behave the way you expect.
You might notice:
- Space is added above or below the list
- But not between each bullet point
In this post, I’ll show you how to change spacing between bullet points in Word, how to reduce space between bullets and text in Word and how to change and fine-tune list spacing quickly.
Why changing Before and After Spacing between bullet points doesn’t work properly
When you adjust paragraph spacing, Word often treats the entire list as one block. That’s why you don’t immediately see spacing between individual bullet points. The issue comes down to a setting called: “Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style”.
Once you know where that setting is, fixing the problem takes just a few seconds.
- Open Microsoft Word.
- You can now either create a very simple bullet list or open an existing document which already contains a list. Remember to use your shortcuts! Ctrl + O to go to the Open screen in backstage view or Ctrl + F12 to bypass backstage view and display the Open dialog box.
- Highlight all items within your list:
- Select the Layout tab from the Ribbon.
- From the Paragraph group, locate the Spacing section and use the up and down arrows to increase or decrease the Before and After spacing as needed. By default these increment by 6pt at a time. If you want to make it a different value, simply type in the spacing you’d like e.g. 8 and add the pt to the end for the measurement.
- You will see the spacing is only being applied above the list and/or below the list, not in between each list item.
- To fix this, click the dialog box launcher to open the Paragraph Settings dialog:
- From the Paragraph dialog box, find the Spacing section towards the bottom and you should also then see a checkbox titled Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style:
- Untick this checkbox.
- Click OK.
- We have now applied the Before and After spacing to every item within the list:
This simple little checkbox allows you to easily change spacing between bullet points in Word.
How to reduce space between bullet and text in Word
Another common issue is when there is too much or not enough gap between the bullet itself and the text.
Let’s look at how to adjust this spacing:
- Make sure the Ruler is visible under the ribbon:
- If the Ruler is not visible, select the View tab from the Ribbon and tick the box for Ruler.
- Highlight the entire bulleted list.
- From the Home or Layout tab, locate the Paragraph group and click the dialog box launcher to open the Paragraph Settings dialog:
- Check the Indentation section and specifically the Left setting.
- The Left setting will pinpoint where on the ruler, the bullet symbol will be aligned:
- Change this to 1cm, or your preferred position.
- Now look at the Special setting which should say to Hanging:
- Change the By setting to 1cm. This will mean the bullet point symbol will align at the 1cm mark on the ruler, and the text will align 1cm further along the ruler at the 2cm mark.
- Click OK.
- The space between the bullet symbol and the text will be adjusted:
- You can also use the markers on the ruler to direct drag and drop them to the alignment you want on the ruler.
I hope this has helped you learn how to change spacing between bullet points in Word and reduce the space between the bullet and text in Word.
Check out my other post to show you how to customised the alignment of your numbered lists or any ofmy other Microsoft Word articles.
7 Responses
Thanks so much for this @ The Training Lady!
The one thing I wanted to amend was not having the same amount of space between each line of text, but only space between each bullet point (i.e. single space between the lines of text for each bullet point, but then perhaps 6pt. between bullet points).
It was points 8 & 9 above: find ‘Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style’ checkbox > Untick this checkbox
The one thing I hadn’t had the sense to do (obviously misreading the meaning of said checkbox – duhhh).
Thanks again!
Thank you so much!!
You’re welcome Marika.
That is great, but what if I have sentences that run more than one line. I do not want 1.5 between each line. I would like to have the sentence at single space and the between the numbers 1.5. Can you show me how to do that?
Hi Barbara,
It sounds as though you are using the Line spacing setting and choosing 1.5 lines. Instead try setting the Line spacing back to Single and then use the Before and After settings for Spacing which will only apply spacing above or below paragraphs (or sentences which run over more than 1 line). That should solve the problem.
This works well, but I have to do it every time for each bulleted list. I’d like all my bulleted lists to be 1.5 line spaced. Again I can do this with the Paragraph options but then all paragraphs are 1.5 spaced; not just the bullets. Any advice would be appreciated!
Hi Tim,
So glad to hear you have found the article useful. The best approach for this, so you don’t have to fix this every time you use a list, is to create a list Style. You can save these to the normal.dot template and therefore have it available in any document. You can then apply this setting within the Style. Here is a link to an article introducing you to Styles in MS Word.