The fine art of whitespace in documents, web pages, and more is an art form with many, many rules. Whitespace, also known as negative space, is the empty space between elements (text, graphics) in a design. Whitespace is used to improve legibility and to add balance, focus and impact.
The combination of different techniques becomes complex and it is important to understand each and use them correctly.
Margins
Margins comprise the area at the top, bottom, left and right of the page in which text will not normally appear.
Margins can be set per section in a document.
Vertical and horizontal alignment between left and right margins.
Horizontal
Spaces
The Space bar is used exclusively to add one space between consecutive words. There should never be 2 consecutive spaces in any document. Normal rules apply as to where spaces should appear. Watch specifically for the following:
There should never be spaces:
- between a word and a full stop, comma, colon or semi-colon
- immediately inside opening and closing brackets of any kind
Read the post on checking spacing in a Word document for more.
Tabs
Tabs should be used to create horizontal space where one space is not sufficient.
Image and Table alignment
By default images and tables occupy the full width of a document regardless of their width — that is to say that text before or after a table or image will be placed above or below those elements, not next to them (this principle exists in HTML as well).
This default can be over-ridden using wrapping.
Text Wrapping
Vertical
A common error in word processing documents is the misuse of the Enter key to create vertical whitespace.
Line spacing
Line spacing is the space between the lines in a paragraph.
Paragraph spacing
Paragraph spacing is the space between paragraphs. Paragraph spacing between paragraphs, and between paragraphs and headings, should always be greater than line spacing within paragraphs.
Breaks
Documents are broken into pages and sections using a variety of breaks.
Tables
Cell margins and spacing can be used in Microsoft Word in the same way that cellpadding and cellspacing are used in HTML tables. The settings are at table level.
Tabs can be used in tables at cell level.
Line spacing and paragraph spacing can be implemented in tables at cell level.
Vertical and horizontal alignment within cells at cell level.
Columns
Column breaks can be used to control the flow of text in columns.