Google Docs Extra Space Between Paragraphs: How to Remove It

To remove extra space between paragraphs in Google Docs, select the paragraphs, open Format > Line & paragraph spacing > Custom spacing, set both Before and After to 0, and click Apply. The gap is almost always paragraph spacing (space added above or below each paragraph), not line spacing, which is why changing the line spacing to “Single” often doesn’t fix it.

Below is how to fix it in a single document, how to make the fix permanent, and what to check when the gap keeps coming back. Menu names are as described in Google’s help pages as of November 2026; Google occasionally renames or moves items, so look for similar wording if yours differs.

Why the extra space appears

Google Docs has two separate spacing controls, and they’re easy to confuse:

Google’s paragraph formatting help page describes both controls in the same menu. The gap you see between paragraphs comes from the space before or after values, and sometimes from both stacking up (one paragraph’s “after” plus the next paragraph’s “before”).

Common causes:

• The paragraph style has spacing built in. Headings in particular carry their own before/after spacing, as Indiana University’s Google Docs training points out.
• Pasted text brought its own formatting. Content copied from web pages, email or chat tools often arrives with spacing from the source.
• Empty paragraphs. An extra blank line (an Enter press with no text) adds a full line of space plus any paragraph spacing on top.

Fix 1: Remove the space with Custom spacing

This is the precise fix and works on any selection.

1. Select the paragraphs with the extra space. To fix the whole document, press Ctrl+A (Windows/ChromeOS) or Cmd+A (Mac).
2. Click Format in the menu bar, then Line & paragraph spacing. You can also use the line spacing icon in the toolbar.
3. Click Custom spacing.
4. Under paragraph spacing, set Before to 0 and After to 0. If you like a small gap, enter a smaller number instead of 0.
5. Click Apply.

Google’s help page describes exactly this flow: click Custom spacing, enter the size of the spacing you want before and after a paragraph, and click Apply.

Fix 2: Use the quick add/remove options

If you don’t need exact numbers, the same Line & paragraph spacing menu has one-click options. Depending on the current setting, you’ll see Remove space before paragraph or Add space before paragraph, and the matching options for space after. Clicking “Remove space before paragraph” and “Remove space after paragraph” on the selected text has the same effect as setting both values to 0.

The menu only shows the option that applies to the current state, so if you see “Add space after paragraph,” there is no extra space after that paragraph to remove. Look at the “before” option, or at the paragraph below it.

Fix 3: Make the change stick with paragraph styles

Fixes 1 and 2 change the selected text only. Paragraphs you type later, or text you switch back to Normal text, can pick up the old spacing again. To change it at the style level, use the approach in Google’s styles help page:

Update the style in the current document

1. Click inside a Normal text paragraph that you’ve already fixed with Custom spacing.
2. Open Format > Paragraph styles > Normal text.
3. Choose Update ‘Normal text’ to match.

Every paragraph using Normal text in that document now uses your spacing. You can repeat this for Heading 1, Heading 2, Title and so on if headings also have too much space around them. GCFGlobal’s text styles lesson walks through the same update process with screenshots.

Save it as the default for new documents

1. After updating the styles, go to Format > Paragraph styles > Options.
2. Click Save as my default styles.

New documents you create should then start with your spacing. In an older document that still uses Google’s original styles, open the same Options menu and choose Use my default styles to apply your saved version. Reset styles in that menu goes back to Google’s original styles, so avoid it unless that’s what you want.

Saved defaults apply to your account. Documents created by other people, or from templates, keep their own styles until you update them.

When the gap keeps coming back

Pasted text

Paste without formatting to avoid importing the source’s spacing: Edit > Paste without formatting, or Ctrl+Shift+V (Cmd+Shift+V on Mac). Be aware that this strips styling but won’t remove blank lines that were part of the copied text, so you may still need to delete empty paragraphs by hand.

If the text is already in your document, select it and use Format > Clear formatting (Ctrl+\ on Windows, Cmd+\ on Mac). Third-party guides agree on this shortcut, but they don’t say clearly whether it resets paragraph spacing in every case, so check the result and follow up with Custom spacing if a gap remains.

Headings that sit far from the text

Headings have their own before/after spacing. Click in the heading, open Custom spacing, reduce the values, then use Format > Paragraph styles > Heading X > Update ‘Heading X’ to match so every heading of that level changes together.

Blank lines between paragraphs

If you or a previous editor pressed Enter twice between paragraphs, there’s an empty paragraph in the gap. Click into the empty line and press Backspace to delete it. Custom spacing can’t remove an empty paragraph, only the space around it.

Documents generated by scripts or apps

If the document is created by an integration or a script using the Google Docs API, the spacing may be set programmatically. Google’s Docs API formatting guide shows paragraph styles with spaceAbove and spaceBelow values (the API’s names for space before and after), and the reference notes that unset values are inherited from the parent style. If generated documents keep arriving with big gaps, the fix belongs in that tool’s settings or code rather than in each document.

Quick reference

For most people, Fix 1 followed by “Update ‘Normal text’ to match” solves the problem for good in that document, and saving your default styles stops it from coming back in new ones.