How To Double Space in Google Docs

Anyone who’s gone through high school and college since the 90s knows about the “double-spacing with a size 12 font” way to make your essays and other written documents appear a bit lengthier. Google Docs uses 1.15 line spacing and size 11 font by default. This is perfectly fine for most users as it keeps the document looking more compact and legible.

However, using double spaced lining could make the document easier to read and provide a better printing cutoff if necessary. Double spacing has a way of making your document appear more clearly to a reader’s eyes and thus much easier to avoid re-reading a line over again.

This article will detail the procedure on how to add double space (as well as 1.5) to your Google Docs for not only desktop but on mobile devices as well.

Adjusting The Google Doc Line Spacing On a Desktop

The desktop version of the Google Docs application has a few ways to adjust your documents line spacing in order to add a double space. The first way to do so will be using the icon located on the toolbar.

What you’ll need to do is:

1. Log in to Google Docs, and open the document for which you’re currently editing and need to add double space.
   
2. Highlight the specific text you wish to add double spacing to by holding down the mouse left-click and dragging it across the desired text. You can also left-click at the beginning of the text, hold down the Shift key on your keyboard, and then left-click again just after the last character you want to highlight. To highlight the entire document, press CTRL+A.
   
3. Once all of the necessary text has been highlighted, click on the Line spacing icon, which is located directly to the right of the Justify icon on your toolbar.
   
4. Select the Double option from the menu in order to add double spacing to your text.
   

The second way to add double space to your text can be done through the “Format” tab. You’ll need to highlight your text just like in the previous steps and then:

1. Click on the Format tab to open the menu.
2. From the menu, choose Line spacing and then Double.

Both ways work exactly the same, just a single step more for the latter option.

Adjusting The Google Doc Line Spacing On Android & iOS

The instructions provided will work for both Android and iOS devices. No deviation is necessary. You will have to have the Google Docs (or Google Drive) application already downloaded and installed on your device before following the steps below.

In order to add double spacing to your Android or iOS device:

1. Launch the Google Docs app and open the document of which you want to add double spacing.
   
2. Tap the blue Edit icon located at the bottom-right corner of the screen.
   
3. You’ll need to press down on the screen and drag your finger across the text in order to highlight it.
   • You can also double-tap and then drag to select an area. If you’re attempting to highlight a single paragraph, tap once with two fingers. You can also hold a finger down at the beginning and end of a paragraph to highlight it all.
     
4. Tap the icon that looks like an ‘A’ with horizontal lines on its side. This is the Formatting icon.
   
5. Move over to the Paragraph tab and tap on the upward arrow located next to Line spacing.
   
6. Increase the space to 2 and tap on the checkmark toward the top-left corner to apply the changes when finished.
   

All of the provided instructions should be more than enough to have you editing your document line spacing on both desktop and mobile device apps. Should you choose, the same instructions can be used to adjust your line spacing to 1 (single) or 1.5 as well. The desktop version also allows custom spacing which will allow you to adjust the line spacing to whichever size tickles your fancy.

Double Space By Default On a Desktop

The desktop version has another interesting little feature that both the Android and iOS apps lack – double space by default. This means anytime you open a Google Doc, the normally 1.15 spacing will instead be double automatically.

To do this:

1. In your web browser (Google Chrome preferred), head to Google Docs and open up a document.
2. Highlight any portion of already double-spaced text. If you’ve been following along, you can do this in the same document you already have open.
3. In the toolbar, click Normal text to pull down a menu.
4. From the menu, click the arrow located to the right of Normal text.
5. You’ll receive two options: Apply ‘Normal text’ and Update ‘Normal text’ to match. Choose the second option.
6. In the toolbar again, click Normal text to pull down a menu.
7. Select Options and choose Save as my default styles.

Formatting Google Docs

Changing your line spacing in Google Docs is very easy. With a few clicks or taps, your documents can quickly be made to meet whatever formatting standards you need or they can be made easier to read.

We also have articles on adding outlines to Google Docs and making flyers.