Spacing recommendations

Does anyone have guidelines or "best practices" regarding the use of
Word's paragraph spacing capabilities ??

For example, suppose I want 12 points of space in between any given
pair of consecutive "body" paragraphs. How should I define my "body"
style ? Should I use:
(1) 12 points before and zero points after, or
(2) Zero points before and 12 after, or
(3) 6 points before and 6 after
(4) Something else

It seems to me that #3 works best. The only downside is that the 6 pts
of "space before" prevents me from putting headings close to my body
paragraphs (which I sometimes want to do). I have tried #2, also, and
it seems to create a lot of extra work with spacing around figures,
tables, and bulleted lists.

For your amusement ... many years ago, I edited some docs from the
documentation group at Microsoft. Their approach was to put in an
extra carriage return, and then adjust its height. I hope that's not
the best approach these days.

thanks

bk