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In Microsoft Word 2013, and I suspect more recent versions of Word as well, the tops and bottoms of equations are "cut off" or otherwise not displayed if the paragraph line spacing is insufficiently large. (The line spacing setting can be found at: Home > Paragraph > Indents and Spacing > Line spacing.)

Is there any way to force Word to instead display all of the equation regardless of line spacing?

(There is often no overlap between the equation and surrounding text anyway, so an override of the clipping functionality seems like a reasonable option for Word to include.)

Notably, for interested readers, other equation/text processing systems such as LaTeX do not have this problem of omitting parts of equations when line spacing is too narrow.

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2 Answers 2

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MS Word cuts off the top and bottom of inline equations if line spacing is too narrow. Can this be overridden?

(A) Use space before / after text in a single line.

Should be straightforward. Select the text and then Paragraph. Set Spacing above and below.

Do this for a single line (not a whole "paragraph")

You may wish to make a Style for equations so that you can re-use the setting.

This is Native to Word.

Word Paragraph Spacing

(B) You might also try the Word (2016) Equation Editor.

Word Equation Editor

Start Word 2016 and open a document to work in. Position the cursor at the point where you want the equation to be inserted. 2. To bring up the Equation Editor, On the Insert tab, in the Symbols group, click the arrow next to Equation, and then click Insert New Equation. This will bring up the equation editor toolbar and will place an edit box at the insertion point in the document. Note that the menu at the top of the screen has changed. Entries in this menu now pertain to the Equation Editor. Note: Clicking anywhere outside of the edit box twice will cause the equation toolbar to go away and return you to normal editing mode with an equation object inserted in the document. Clicking on the equation object and then clicking on the Equation tools tab brings up the Equation Editor again.

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(C) Use Text Boxes for equations

Finally, you can put your equation (s) in a text box (es) and flow the word text around the box. You can set the box large enough to take your equations.

I would find this harder to implement than equations on a single line. You might see it differently.

You can also change the font size of the equation itself within the line to make it smaller and fit, but that does not strike me as helpful to a wider audience.

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  • Thanks for this idea, John. However, changing the "Before" and "After" spacing as you describe just adds spacing above and below the paragraph without changing how equations internal to the paragraph are displayed. Additionally, I would like to display the clipped-off parts of the equations without visibly changing the white space at all.
    – SapereAude
    Commented May 5, 2022 at 0:24
  • For a single line, if you add sufficient space above / below, that would provide. I looked at font above / below first, but that does not seem feasible. So you need to separate out the equations. This is native to Word. There are 3rd party equation editors (several to choose from)
    – anon
    Commented May 5, 2022 at 0:28
  • There is also the Word Equation Editor which may help you in certain circumstances .. I added Equation Editor to my answer
    – anon
    Commented May 5, 2022 at 0:32
  • You can also use text boxes for equations and I noted that.
    – anon
    Commented May 5, 2022 at 1:01
  • John, thanks for these creative ideas. Admittedly, I wasn't able to implement any of them in a manner that didn't change the white space around the inline equations. The workarounds you describe are also fairly labor intensive for my particular document, which involves many short variables with super- and subscripts. The problem is looking increasingly like a design flaw in MS Word. (Ah well, back to LaTeX...)
    – SapereAude
    Commented May 5, 2022 at 22:49
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As John's answer, using the Word (2016) Equation Editor is a good approach, for some design advice for Word you can also go to feedback

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    – Community Bot
    Commented May 6, 2022 at 6:49

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