Paragraph formatting in notes

Ninirt

I often create either stand-alone notes or add notes to bibliographical entries. Sometimes I first create these in Microsoft Word and then paste them into Zotero. Other times I copy text snippets from books, web pages or PDF documents.

When I paste text into my notes I cannot seem to get the paragraph spacing I prefer which is single line spacing. Usually I get double or even triple spacing between paragraphs. Sometimes single spaced text becomes double spaced.

Is there any way of controlling paragraph and line spacing in Zotero for text that is copied from Microsoft Word or sources such as books or PDF documents and the like.

My thanks in advance for your help and suggestions.

dstillman

See my two responses in this thread, which explain why you're thinking of this the wrong way (and also how to change how it's displayed, if that's really what you want):

https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/343756/#Comment_343756

dstillman

Or, well, sorry, I guess you did refer to this as paragraph spacing, so it sounds like you do understand the implications. Just keep in mind the difference between line spacing and paragraph spacing when copying between different programs. It's not totally clear what you mean by "double or even triple spacing between paragraphs", but there's a visual difference and a semantic difference, and you want to be sure not to conflate the two.

Ninirt

Thanks for your quick response. I very much appreciate it.

I see! I'm still very new to Zotero, but I think I understand what you're saying:

1) Zotero notes retains the hard/original formatting that comes with whatever you paste into it.
2) What Zotero displays in notes is different from how the text will be outputted.
3) if you want to alter how Zotero displays text, you have to use the Config Editor to make changes to what looks like a HTML file (CSS coding?)
4) such editing in no way changes how note text is 'hard'formatted/stored or outputted
5) In order to ensure that your text is outputted exactly how you want it, you should be careful how you format it to begin with

Which raises some further questions, at least to me:

1) how closely does Zotero notes follow Microsoft Word formatting. Suppose I copy text from a Word document into Notes and also create a Zotero note from within Zotero. If I then output both of these Zotero notes how closely will the two outputted texts resemble each other?
2) sometimes I copy text from web pages into Zotero notes. Usually the text has the same line end formatting as Zotero notes and Word (I assume line ends are made without hitting the return key to make for a 'hard' break). Sometimes though, it seems that the line breaks have been made with a return (hard break?). The result is that lines end in the middle of the page (like this:

John was running down the hill to meet Mary. He was excited as he had not seen her for over four weeks. Now there she was
resplendent in her red dress and straw hat. He could see she was holding a basket overflowing with fruit, cakes and other delicacies. He in turn had brought her favorite
flowers, yellow roses ........ etc.

The only way I know to reformat this text is to delete what is probably a hard return at end of the truncated/short line (in the above example, after 'was').

So I wonder if you know of any quick way of reformatting such formatted text either in Zotero or word.

Thanks for your help and advice. I very much appreciate them.