How do I cut and paste a DOUBLE SPACED piece of writing into DISCUSSIONS?

[Kgal]

How do I cut and paste a DOUBLE SPACED piece of writing into DISCUSSIONS?

Our instructor does not want us to attach a document. But he wants our submissions to be double spaced.  And the discussion removes all paragraph indents and line spacing when I cut and paste it. 

[carterkristin]

From what I can tell, you can't.  Discussion are meant to be shorter texts.  You could always hit return twice between each line, but that seems like a lot of extra added work.  I would mention this to your instructor.  The only work around I can see is to upload your document, rather than copy and paste it straight into the discussion text box.  To do this, open the discussion, click insert, click document, and upload as normal.  I doubt this is what your instructor really wants since it adds an extra step in reading the discussion for others who want to reply to it, but it's the only way I can see to make sure it is double spaced.  Again, perhaps you should check with your instructor to be sure that they really want the discussion post double spaced or if they meant written work should be double spaced.  Good luck!  I hope this was helpful!

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hello there, @Kgal ...

In addition to the information that @carterkristin gave you, it seems that your instructor may have a misunderstanding of how word processed documents work compared to inputting/typing text in something like an online discussion forum topic...as there are some distinct differences.  I searched the Community and found a couple past discussion topics where @James and I had responded to similar questions:

•  
• How do I indent and double space paragraphs in dialog box 

I hope these resources will be of help to you.  Please let Community members know if you have any other questions about this...thanks!  Take care...be well.

[Kgal]

Thank you for responding so quickly.

Actually, I found a way to double space in Discussions.  I modified the HTML.  It was quite simple. 

The toggle for HTML is </> in the bottom right hand side below the box.

Then I changed each paragraph tag from <p1 ... > to include <p1 ... style="line-height: 2;">   The key command to insert into the paragraph tag is style="line-height: 2;"

Then I saved and hit the HTML toggle back to text.

FYI Besides being tedious, manually putting in line feeds won't work on an online text box like Discussions because when someone resizes the screen the line feed will not shift as it should. The manual line feed will stay where ever you put it in the sentence.

I realize not everyone is comfortable with HTML (my HTML skills are rudimentary at best) so maybe this is not a great solution.  I think the instructor is accepting single spaced now--he didn't ding anyone on single spacing..  Mine was the only correctly formatted submission.  

Cheers, Karina