How do you control line spacing in emails?

How do you control the line spacing (leading) in
emails?

I have Mac Mail configured to compose new messages as
Plain Text, which are always single-spaced. Yet if I
am replying to a message and have included a
paragraph form the original, it sometimes comes in as
double-spaced.

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to change
it to singe-spacing. Searching Mac Help for "Line
Spacing," "double space," and "leading" all result in
"No pages with your search words were found."

Also, quoted text (from reply emails) will often
rewrap with hard returns after every line, even
though the orignal did not have returns after every
line. Is there any way to fix that?

Completely agree with the post and am curious whether there is an answer to this? I'm currently, and reluctantly, switching Mail programs because of the formatting issues with quoted emails. It's getting particularly annoying.



Dual 450mhz G4 Tower Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Hello,

In Mail Preferences/Composing, is the box checked or
unchecked beside Use the same message format?

Ernie

On my computer it was not checked. But I tried checking it and clicking reply with the same results. It adds spaces / formatting as indicated above.

Dual 450mhz G4 Tower Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Thanks -- I am going to have to think about this for a while. I do not experience this randomness of line spacing, so I am unsure what to next check.

Are any other functions not behaving as you would expect them to?

Ernie

This happened to me for some time, and I'm pretty sure it's a bug. Unfortunately, I don't know what caused the problem in my case, nor can I reproduce it anymore. A good place to start looking at would be Mail > Preferences > Fonts & Colors. Try changing the Message font; try checking/unchecking Use fixed-width font for plain text messages; with that setting enabled, try using the same and different settings for Message font and Plain text font...

Note also that the annoying "formatting" only happens while you're composing the message. The message is sent OK (it couldn't be otherwise if sent as Plain Text). You can check this yourself by looking at the message in the Sent mailbox after it's been sent. You cannot ignore the problem completely, though, because it may make you believe that there is paragraph spacing where there is none. In particular, I sometimes found myself sending a reply where my reply appeared immediately after the quoted text I was replying to, without the blank line I would have put there if Mail displayed the contents properly while composing.

Note also that the annoying "formatting" only happens
while you're composing the message. The message is
sent OK (it couldn't be otherwise if sent as Plain
Text). You can check this yourself by looking at the
message in the Sent mailbox after it's been
sent.

Thanks for the feedback. I actually just checked it out this morning and even in Plain Text Mode, Mail retains this sort of doubled spaced leading for some reason. I converted the email to Plain Text and sent it to myself. The quoted text still retained the formatting in both the received email and the sent email.

This definitely seems like a bug.

even in Plain Text Mode, Mail retains this
sort of doubled spaced leading for some reason.

Well, this is certainly not what I experienced when it happened to me, and it doesn't make sense either. Maybe Mail didn't fulfill your request to convert it to Plain Text? I wonder how another mail client would display that same message. Also, have you tried changing the font Mail uses to render the message?

even in Plain Text Mode, Mail retains this
sort of doubled spaced leading for some reason.

Well, this is certainly not what I experienced when
it happened to me, and it doesn't make sense either.
Maybe Mail didn't fulfill your request to convert it
to Plain Text? I wonder how another mail client would
display that same message. Also, have you tried
changing the font Mail uses to render the message?

I just messed with the fonts and the results were the same. I took a screenshot of the issue to show you what it looks like:

http://img387.imageshack.us/img387/4025/mailissue4ee.gif

I, obviously, pasted in some greek content but the formatting is seen clearly. It appears to be almost double spaced. Also.. As the quote level increases (i.e. the longer the email chains become) the spacing also increases. So you can imagine that on a chain that goes back and forth 5-10 times (as often happens in business) the email length and formatting becomes absurd.

Dual 450mhz G4 Tower Mac OS X (10.4.6)

I took a screenshot of the issue
to show you what it looks like

I know what the issue looks like. I've experienced it myself in the past. What I didn't experience and doesn't make sense to me is that the issue persists in the message that's actually being sent (and received thereafter), if it's really being sent as Plain Text. There cannot be any "formatting" information in such a message, so I wonder whether it is really being sent as Plain Text.

If, in Preferences > Composing, you choose Plain Text as the Message Format, and disable Use the same message format as the original message, the message that's actually being sent shouldn't have that "formatting", even if Mail still displays it improperly while composing. At least, that's how things were in my case.

If, in Preferences > Composing, you choose
Plain Text as the Message Format, and
disable Use the same message format as the
original message, the message that's actually
being sent shouldn't have that "formatting", even if
Mail still displays it improperly while composing. At
least, that's how things were in my case.

Gotcha. Yeah.. In my case, I make those adjustments, it displays incorrectly in composing (as you indicated), I send it to myself (in plain text) and when I view the email that is received, the formatting (line spacing) is still there. Maybe I'm just lucky 🙂

The things you're talking about here are not part of the message content, but rather the result of how Mail parses and renders that content. If you do View > Message > Raw Source, you'll see that the '>' quoting characters are indeed there, and that there is no color information embedded in those messages.

Whether the weird paragraph spacing is also a bug in the way Mail parses and renders some Plain Text messages, or it is a bug that causes Mail to embed wrong "formatting" information in messages that should stop being Plain Text in order to carry it, I don't know, because I didn't investigate it when it happened to me and I cannot reproduce that behavior anymore.

Interesting...I tried that and discoverd that some
lines end with =20, some with =20=, and other with
nothing at all. Any idea what that means?

And to state the obvious, it would be nice if you
could view your message in plain text while composing
in plain text.

I'm seeing the exact same thing as you, jshock, when I look at the Raw Source - a bunch of =20 =20='s at the end of lines.. I think you and I are experiencing the same issue with the strange Mail formatting.

And Ernie - when I do as you describe - when I change the format to "Plain Text" from the Format menu after clicking reply to a message - the quoted portion of the message with the strange formatting maintains the strange spacing / formatting even in Plain Text Mode.

Dual 450mhz G4 Tower Mac OS X (10.4.6)

FWIW, I note all kind of inconsistencies in how Mail handles the display of new, plain text messages. Plain text cannot support any style info at all. Some of this is trapped -- if for example you try to change the color, font, or boldness of text by any method, Mail warns you the message type must be changed to rich text to make that change.

But if you change the font size using the Format -> Style -> Bigger or Smaller menu items, Mail changes the displayed text size without this warning, & the content type remains plain text. Oddly, trying to change size directly through the floating Fonts window does trigger the warning.

However, it isn't just that the Fonts window is trapped & some Format menu items aren't, because you can use either the Fonts window option or the Format menu one for underlining text & get no warning or change to rich text.

To add to the confusion, if you send the message in this state, it remains plain text, but if you save it as a draft, it is converted to rich text without warning or any indication other than by checking the Format menu for content type -- whichever type it offers is not the one of the draft.

It doesn't help that you can't view the full ("long") header or raw source of a draft or new message, or that the keyboard shortcut to change to rich or plain text is the same, so the only way to be absolutely sure which type you have is with the Format menu's "the other one" option.