If you use the Auto space before and after a paragraph you only get one or
the other of them, and not both, depending upon where the paragraph is and
what comes before or after it.

If the paragraph is at the top of the page, the autospace before is ignored.
If you have a table between two paragraphs that are formatted with autospace
before and after, you will get a space before and after the table (which is
what you would normally require.

I am not sure exactly what it is, but the autospace is slightly more that 12
points.

In most cases, setting Autospace before and after seems to work quite well.

Unfortunately, the most common setting (and the very worst) seems to be to
have no space before or after and use the enter key to insert an empty
paragraph to get spacing between paragraphs. Many practitioners of that
method seem to be also unaware of the purpose of the tab key, or for that
matter any of the capabilities of the most basic word processor and the
documents that they prepare might just as well have been created with a
typewriter.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com
"bubbakittee" wrote in message
...
In Word's paragraph spacing dialog, I see that there is an option to
make the spacing "automatic"). This is in the "space before" and
"space after" fields.

What does "automatic" mean ?

thanks

bk