Not a font problem - it is how whatever program you are using is setting it.

I know, I'm just wondering why the designer designed it that way. Is there a single character that takes up a lot of space?

No, bojev said it is your composition, not design of the font.

What program are you using to compose the lines you show?

OpenOffice Writer, but it displays the same behavior in Paint Shop Pro

(Note cursor size)

Below is an example from text as entered in Jasc (now Corel) Paint Shop Pro

And finally an example from MS Wordpad (same family as Office):

Using Windows 7. Sorry for misunderstanding your earlier comment about it possibly being the program, Bojev. Multiple programs suggest it's the font, but I could be mistaken. I assumed it was a design detail, which is why I posted here. Just curious about this.

I'm aware I can adjust the line spacing myself in the various programs. I'm just wondering why it's different by default than other fonts such as Times New Roman?

A little detective work:
In this font, the Bounding Box goes 700 units below baseline, 1002 above. That's 702 units more than the 1000 unit em.
The height accommodates accents above capitals, and is fairly normal.
The depth accommodates some ornaments -- vertical border elements.
The lowest typographic elements (commaaccent) are maximum 277 below baseline.
So the ornaments in the font are responsible for its large line spacing.

Here is Caslon Pro set at 14pt with 14pt leading and as you can see the ascenders and descenders will touch at this leading. Seems that with proper adjustment of leading you can solve the "problem"

I've run into this problem with OpenOffice and all the Adobe typefaces with ornaments.

st

Thank you all, that does solve the mystery for me. :)

Larry