Why is my leading huge even though it is set very small?

[AmericanoPlease]

I've been working on a document for about 2 months now. Today I opened the program, started working, and the leading isn't working properly. For example, say the font is 12pt and I set the leading to 5pt. The result looks like the leading is set to maybe 24pt. I am attaching a sample document. Please help!

Affinity_LeadingProblem.afpub

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @AmericanoPlease

Unless I’m misunderstanding the problem because I can’t see what you are seeing, you have the Space After Paragraph set to 12pt, so every time you press Enter – to create a new paragraph – you will get the extra space between paragraphs. Set Space After Paragraph – in the Paragraph Panel, Spacing section – to something smaller.

[Old Bruce]

38 minutes ago, AmericanoPlease said:

say the font is 12pt and I set the leading to 5pt.

What you want to say is 12 point type with 5 points of leading means 12 on 17. We take the space between the type and add the font size and the space between the baselines which we want . 12 + 5 = 17. Your document shows 1 point between the baselines so that would be 12 + (-11) = 1.

[Hangman]

Hi @AmericanoPlease and welcome to the forums...

As @GarryP and @Old Bruce have mentioned, because the default Space After Paragraph is set to 12 pt, then each time you create a new paragraph in your text by hitting Enter or Return, if you've set your Leading to 5 pt, then you effectively have 12 pt type with 17 pt leading...

You just need to adjust your Space After Paragraph accordingly if you want additional leading between paragraphs vs within paragraphs...