Google Docs Re-Oriented for People Who Care (too much?)

Problem:

“Why the is there random whitespace after I hit enter sometimes? Especially lists?”

Answer:

You’re falling into ‘normal text’ styles (little dropdown, left of the font- it’s called the “styles dropdown”). Docs seems to presume that you’re writing your next big breakout novella and wants gigantic paragraph spacing by default. Why? idk. Let’s fix it so the enter key behaves normally.

Solution:

1. Open a fresh doc. Paste this in:

   Title
   Subtitle
   Heading 1
   Heading 2
   Heading 3
   Heading 4
   Heading 5
   Heading 6
   

2. Click each line, then apply the matching style from the style dropdown (e.g., “Title” for the title line).

3. Select everything (CTRL+A) then go to Format > Line & Paragraph Spacing > Custom Spacing.

4. Set the Before and After boxes to 0. Leave Line Spacing at 1.15 unless you want tighter line spacing.

5. Hit Apply.

Make It Stick:

• Open the style dropdown (left of font dropdown), scroll to the bottom.
• Click Options > Save as my default styles.

This now applies to all your new docs.

Caveats:

• Won’t affect shared docs you didn’t create (prolly obvious but just sayin’.)
• Pasting in styled text from someone else’s Docs dumpster fire may “pollute” your now superior, clean, and controllable styles.
• Use CTRL+SHIFT+V to paste as plain text to keep your stuff clean to avoid that.

If a doc gets janked up, just redo the fix above - it will bend back to your will.