Word: Paragraph Formatting
Published on 1st March 2005
This time we are going to look at the a couple of hidden aspects to Paragraph Formatting in Word including something we don't expect any of you to know already!
Most people know you can control line spacing, paragraph spacing and indents in the dialog box you get when you give the command Format - Paragraph (or right-click - Paragraph). Today we are going to look at the other tab in that dialog box.
The Line and Page Breaks tab controls how the paragraph reacts to the bottom of the page, and is useful mostly in long documents like reports, manuals and contracts.
Normally, only Widow/Orphan control is switched on. This prevents the paragraph being split by a page break in a way that leaves a line on its own. A Widow is when the last line of the paragraph overflows to the next page, so at the top of the page you get a solitary line. An Orphan is when only the first line is left on its own at the bottom of a page. This control ensures that the Orphan is moved to the next page too, and Widows are joined by the line before so that there is always at least two lines at the top of the page.
Keep Lines Together means that the paragraph will never be split by a page break. Therefore, if there isn't room at the bottom of the page, the whole paragraph will move to the next page.
Keep With Next forces this paragraph to always be on the same page as the following paragraph. This is particularly suitable for your headings to avoid them being at the bottom of the page on their own. Make sure, however, you don't have a spare line following the heading. If you do, Keep with next will just mean it stays with that empty line rather than the body text.
Page Break Before is also suitable for headings when you want them to start a new page. It forces a page break to always precede it, so that the heading will always be at the top of a page regardless of how much is on the page before.
In our GlobalDebut courseware we set all our paragraphs to have Keep Lines Together. All our headings are Keep With Next (and we use paragraph Spacing After to ensure the gap between it and the body text.) The section headings all have Page Break Before set. We incorporate these settings into the styles we use so that we don't have to keep setting the paragraph format all the time. This saves a great deal of time and helps make the document neater.
The last two options on the tab are rarely used. Suppress line numbers prevents this paragraph from showing the line numbers if you have that feature turned on. Don't Hyphenate, stops any words in the paragraph from being hyphenated at the end of the line - again, if you have that feature turned-on.
"Yes, yes" a few of you will be saying "where's the new information?" Well, you can tell if Keep lines together, Keep with next or Page break before are switched on when you look at the document.
In order to see, you need to have the hidden characters showing, so click the Show/Hide button (the funny p is called a pilcro). If a paragraph has any of those three settings turned on it will be indicated by a black dot in the left-hand margin. Ever wondered what those dots were? They mean that the paragraph has some pagination control set on it.
If you double-click the dot, it will open the Paragraph dialog box to the Line and Page Breaks tab.
If you knew what the dot meant, give yourself three points and if you knew about double-clicking it have another two. Anybody with five points gets our respect and an "Impressive" comment.