The Invisible Gap
When you press Enter at the end of a paragraph in Google Docs, the cursor moves to a new line. However, you may notice that the spacing between paragraphs is noticeably larger than the spacing between lines within the same paragraph. This is because Google Docs applies a default “space after paragraph” value (typically 10–12 points) to the Normal text style. For users accustomed to word processors where pressing Enter simply creates a new line with identical spacing, this automatic extra gap is confusing and unwelcome. It is especially problematic when formatting poetry, dialogue, or legal documents where paragraph spacing must be precisely controlled and consistent with line spacing.
Removing the Default Paragraph Spacing
To stop Google Docs from automatically adding extra space after every paragraph, you need to modify the line and paragraph spacing settings for your text style.
Select all text in your document using Ctrl + A (or Cmd + A on Mac). Navigate to the top menu bar and click Format. Hover over Line & paragraph spacing. At the bottom of the sub-menu, click Custom spacing. A dialogue box will appear showing “Line spacing,” “Before (pt),” and “After (pt)” fields. Change the After value from its current setting (typically 10 or 12) to 0. Optionally adjust the “Before” value to 0 as well if unwanted spacing is appearing above paragraphs. Click Apply. To make this the permanent default for all future documents, after applying the change, click the Normal text style in the toolbar, hover over it in the drop-down, and select Update ‘Normal text’ to match. Then go to Format > Paragraph styles > Options > Save as my default styles. Every new document you create will now use zero paragraph spacing.