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  • Hmmm... bummer, but thanks! BTW, the grad school is going to get an earful on this when I fill out their end-of-degree survey. They actually had the balls to tell me that 1.5-spacing is easier to read. Commented Jul 30, 2010 at 15:55
  • easier to read than what? it is easier to read than single spaced Commented Aug 16, 2010 at 5:51
  • @drfrogsplat, it rarelly depends. Newspapers are not set in 1.5 spacing, and they sure aren't less easy to read because of that. Books, too. I've heard once that more spacing in theses was meant for corrections/comments, or for filling up space for "correct" page counting. So, Reid, if it is mandatory to set line spacing at 1.5, do it; if it isn't an official rule, forget about it and use LaTeX default. Commented Dec 24, 2012 at 10:40
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    @Joseph, newspapers and books have much thinner columns (~5cm and ~10cm respectively) than the typical A4/similar page, single column format of most theses (~15cm). Wider columns mean more chance of picking the wrong 'next' line as you read from one to the next, so a little extra space in wider formats can help. Larger text sizes helps too of course (newsprint/books are more like 9-10pt while a thesis is more likely 12pt). 1.5 isn't necessarily the best, but its probably a little better than 1.0 and certainly better than 2.0. I picked about 1.3 for mine. Commented Dec 27, 2012 at 12:57
  • @drfrogsplat: sounds sensible. Do you think one could calculate an adequate (optimal?) \baselineskip as a function of \textwidth and font size? Commented Jul 10, 2014 at 8:05