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Help! Messages I send are double spaced for the recipient
A frequent question in Outlook forums asks how to fix Outlook so that messages aren't double spaced for the recipient. This effect is caused by the HTML coding and is most frequent for recipients using a web-based email client, such as Hotmail, Yahoo, and GMail. This is because of the way Outlook creates line breaks in HTML and how browsers or other clients interpret them. In some cases, the message is correctly spaced when received and only double spaced when replied to.

Cause

 When you press Enter while creating HTML email, Outlook inserts a paragraph tag (<p>), so two Enters (for white space between the paragraphs) inserts two <p> tags, which is double spaced when rendered in a browser. If you use Shift+Enter twice, which creates the line break tag (<br>), the message will not look double spaced in a browser.

Solution

You have 4 options:

  1. Use plain text for messages. Plain text will render correctly in any and every email client available.
  2. Press Enter once, not twice, when composing HTML formatted email.
  3. Press Shift+Enter twice at the end of a paragraph, rather than pressing Enter twice.
  4.  Just ignore it as an inconstancy in the way various applications handle HTML.
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Updated Jul 16 2008
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