Blackboard users who are accustomed to desktop publishing software may become frustrated with the lack of text formatting options from within the standard WYSIWYG text editor. When including large blocks of text within a course, users may desire to adjust leading (A.K.A. line spacing) and/or paragraph/bullet point spacing. Properly adjusted leading can improve readability and aesthetics, reducing the “cramped” look that can result from lengthy, single spaced paragraphs.

Adjust Line Spacing

First, edit your content item.
Select all of the text you would like to adjust.
Click the Edit CSS Style button:

Screenshot of the Blackboard text editor

To change line spacing, adjust the “Line Height” value:

Click on the first dropdown to the right of Line Height and select (Value).
Enter a different value here, such as 1.5. You can further customize the unit of measurement in the adjacent dropdown, or simply leave it blank.
Click Update.

Screenshot of the Blackboard Edit CSS Style window

Adjust Paragraph Spacing

One final trick is adjusting space-after, or paragraph spacing, using the HTML editor. When bulleting multiple lines of text, it can become messy looking, as it becomes difficult to see where each bullet is separated:

Adding a margin to the bullets resolves this issue. After you bullet-out your text, select all, and open the HTML editor. You will see <li> before each bullet’s text. Change this to <li style=”margin-bottom: Xpx;”> where X is your value (I used 10 in the following picture):

Screenshot of the Blackboard HTML code view

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