For the last few years, I’ve been an adherent to MB’s recommendation on “exactly 24 pt” spacing (“true double”) in Word to create double-spaced paragraphs, when required. I used this in law school documents and (I’m not sure anyone noticed) when publishing appellate court opinions as a judicial law clerk.
I recently started a new job at a very small firm: 4 attorneys, myself included. When I submitted a pleading to the owner of the firm for review, he insisted that I change my 24pt paragraphs to MS Double. He argued that the actual spacing didn’t matter, merely that if the court looked, it would not say “Double,” and therefore could get thrown out. (This argument ignores that our documents are submitted as PDF. But the court might compare to the spacing of other documents, so that response didn’t get me anywhere.)
In preparation to make an argument about “true double” vs “MS double,” I sought to gather data. The owner is a former engineer, and he likes data. I do as well, and for much the same reason (former computer scientist). The results were surprising.
Here’s what I found, putting the same text into a document with whatever the program calls “Double” spacing:
| Product | Comparison to MS Double |
|---|---|
| LibreOffice | identical |
| Google Docs | identical |
| Pages (iCloud) | looser |
| Zoho Writer | looser |
| Synology Office | looser |
| MS Wordpad | tighter, but looser than Exactly 24pt |
This means that the two nearest competitors (IMO) are identical to the MS Word behavior, and the other likely competitors are even looser than Microsoft’s already loose double-spacing.
All of this is to say, I think the “true double” argument is one I can’t win. And frankly, I’m not sure I’m inclined to try.
Do any of you have experience either fighting this fight with a supervisor or a court? Is it worth even trying to make the argument, or is this a case where good typography has to take a backseat to external pressures?