I'm confused why this thread shows resolved. It is a very old post, I realize, but is still an issue in Office 365, and as far as I remember, every version of Word I've used prior to it. It is a Microsoft issue, not PDF. (Adobe owns certain PDF technology, but the PDF spec itself is in the public domain. The behavior described in the original post occurs regardless of what specific PDF viewer you're using.) I'm wondering, though, if anyone out there has a viable workaround for this Word "feature." It is unique to MS, since I've never experienced it in non-MS software.

Assuming line spacing is set to Single in Paragraph options, Word adjusts the line height automatically to accommodate the largest point size represented on a given line of text. It can be a single character, such as a symbol. If the next line doesn't contain any text with a larger point size, Word reverts back to the default line spacing, which makes the line spacing uneven within the paragraph. If you don't want that uneven spacing, you can specify a fixed line height greater than or equal to the space allocated for that text with the greater point size; this at least makes the lines equally spaced vertically. As far as I know, this like-it-or-lump-it option is really your only option in Word, because if you try reducing the line height, Word then starts cutting off portions of the text. Usually descenders are the first casualty, as described by the OP, but ascenders, caps, and other parts of characters can get chopped off as well.

So, here is the question again: Does anyone know of a way around this other than "let Word do what it wants with line spacing, sigh, roll your eyes, and live with it"?