Extra white space between paragraphs in a PDF is almost always carried over from the source document. The export to PDF preserves paragraph spacing settings exactly β it doesn't add or remove space on its own. So the fix is nearly always in the source rather than in the PDF itself.
Paragraph Spacing Settings in the Source Document
Word and Google Docs both have paragraph spacing settings β space added before and after each paragraph, separate from the line spacing within the paragraph. Modern Word templates often default to 8pt or 10pt of space after each paragraph. When multiple paragraphs stack up, this becomes visually significant, and in a PDF it can look like large gaps between sections.
In Word: select the text or all text (Ctrl+A), go to Home β Paragraph settings (the small arrow at the bottom right of the Paragraph group), and check the "Spacing After" value. Set it to 0pt if you don't want space between paragraphs, or reduce it to something smaller like 4pt for a subtle separation. In Google Docs: Format β Line & paragraph spacing β Add/remove space after paragraph.
Double Paragraph Marks Instead of Single
A common source of unexpected extra space: the original document uses double paragraph marks (pressing Enter twice between paragraphs) instead of a single paragraph mark with spacing applied through the paragraph style. Each Enter creates a new paragraph, and if each paragraph has space after it, two Enters creates double the spacing.
Turn on formatting marks in Word (Ctrl+Shift+8) to see paragraph marks as visible ΒΆ symbols. If you see ΒΆΒΆ between paragraphs, there's a double Enter. Find and replace double paragraph marks (^p^p in Word's Find & Replace) with single ones (^p), then set appropriate paragraph spacing through the style settings rather than empty lines.
Style-Level Spacing Applied to Headings
Heading styles in Word commonly have large space-before values β Heading 1 might have 24pt before and 12pt after. If a document has many headings, the accumulated spacing creates a loose, airy document that may look fine in draft but appears gappy as a PDF.
Adjust heading spacing through the style: right-click a heading β Modify style β Format β Paragraph β adjust the Spacing Before and After values. Changes made to the style apply to all headings of that level throughout the document at once, rather than requiring manual adjustment per heading.
When the PDF Itself Has the Problem
If you received a PDF from someone else and the spacing is wrong but you don't have the source document, options are limited. A PDF Editor can add or remove text, but changing paragraph spacing in a PDF without the source document is not a clean operation β you'd be overlaying corrections rather than fixing the underlying spacing values.
For a PDF you own and need to redistribute with corrected spacing, converting to Word, fixing the spacing there, and re-exporting to PDF is the most reliable path. The conversion won't be perfect but the spacing fix will carry through cleanly in most documents.
Justified Text and Optical Space
Sometimes the spacing looks larger than it is because of justified text combined with certain paragraph break patterns. A short last line of a justified paragraph β one or two words before the paragraph break β followed by the first line of the next paragraph creates a visual gap that feels larger than it actually is measured in points.
This is an optical effect rather than a formatting error. Solutions include adjusting the line length by modifying margins, using less aggressive justification (left-aligned text avoids the short-last-line issue entirely), or editing paragraph breaks to avoid leaving very short lines at paragraph ends.