# amsmath align environment: row spacing

How can I stretch the spacing between consecutive lines in an align* environment? I have a few lines with \fracs in which both the numerator and the denominator consist of textual phrases, not math symbols, and the result looks too cluttered.

\begin{align*}
X &= \frac{\textit{Some text here}}{\textit{And some text here}}\\
Y &= \frac{\textit{Will make everything}}{\textit{Look too close together}}
\end{align*}

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You could add space manually like so:

\begin{align*}
X &= \frac{\textit{Some text here}}{\textit{And some text here}}\\[1em]
Y &= \frac{\textit{Will make everything}}{\textit{Look too close together}}
\end{align*}


change [1em] to suit how much space you want.

Thanks to Ian Thompson in the comments for pointing me to this slightly more elegant solution. If you want to add a little extra spacing to every row of an align:

\begingroup
\begin{align*}
X &= \frac{\textit{Some text here}}{\textit{And some text here}}\\
Y &= \frac{\textit{Will make everything}}{\textit{Look too close together}}
\end{align*}
\endgroup


The \begingroup and \endgroup are to keep the extra alignment local to the environment. If you want all align environments to have the extra spacing, add \addtolength{\jot}{1em} to your preamble instead.

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Thanks - a typical case of "I used to know that" ;-) – Thomas Mar 31 '11 at 14:55
@Thomas this is a pretty crude way to do things. I expect there are cleverer ways like redefining \arraystretch locally or some such... But that's for array not align... – Seamus Mar 31 '11 at 14:58
@Seamus: Yeah, I was looking for something like \arraystretch, but adding space manually works perfectly fine for my case. – Thomas Mar 31 '11 at 15:01
@Seamus, @Thomas: I think \jot is the nearest thing to \arraystretch for this case. \addtolength{\jot}{1em} adds 1em to the default spacing between the rows. – Ian Thompson Mar 31 '11 at 15:12
the \jot solution is already available through the mathtools package as the spreadlines environment, makes the structure a bit 'nicer' – daleif Mar 31 '11 at 23:19