blank space at bottom of page

[Jeff]

In a Word 2002 document, Word forces a paragraph of text to end at
"At 5.4", Ln 23"
forcing the next paragraph of text onto the following page. The
document's top and bottom margins are both set at a 1". Headers/footers
are both set at .5" (only the footer is used for page numbers)

I un-hid the codes and saw no inadvertent "next page" or "section" code
present. I believe this behavior may be happening because there are
lengthy footnotes on this page (though they only start at 8.2"). This
leaves a lot of unnecessary blank space at the bottom of this page's
text. If I remove one of the footnotes, text follows normally. When I
restore it, the strange behavior resumes.

In the paragraph format I see that "Widow/Orphan control" is selected.
But when I un-select it for the last paragraph and the first one on the
new page, there is no change of behavior.

Is there something I can do to prevent Word from forcing a new page at
this point in the text?

Thank you.

Jeff

 

[Jay Freedman]

See http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/BottomLine.htm, especially the
section on footnotes and the discussion of the "Keep with next"
option; and maybe
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/FootnoteOnDiffPage.htm.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

 

[Jeff]

See http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/BottomLine.htm, especially the
section on footnotes and the discussion of the "Keep with next"
option; and maybe
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/FootnoteOnDiffPage.htm.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

thanks. will look at them.

 

[Jeff]

See http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/BottomLine.htm, especially the
section on footnotes and the discussion of the "Keep with next"
option; and maybe
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/FootnoteOnDiffPage.htm.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

Using the info on the urls you recommended I solved my problem. Thought
to describe it for others who might need it.

For just the last paragraph on the short page I changed the paragraph
setting for "Line spacing" to "exactly 13 pts" instead of the default
"single". That pulled the next paragraph from the subsequent page to
where it belonged under that paragraph.

I am using Times New Roman 12 pt for the text font, but when I changed
that paragraph to "exactly 12 pts", the lines were cramped too close
together. Using "exactly 13 pts" made the visual spacing similar to the
other single spacing on the page (at least on the computer screen). Not
sure why.

Thanks for helping.

 

[Jeff]

See http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/BottomLine.htm, especially the
section on footnotes and the discussion of the "Keep with next"
option; and maybe
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/FootnoteOnDiffPage.htm.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

Using the info on the urls you recommended I solved my problem. Thought
to describe it for others who might need it.

For just the last paragraph on the short page I changed the paragraph
setting for "Line spacing" to "exactly 13 pts" instead of the default
"single". That pulled the next paragraph from the subsequent page to
where it belonged under that paragraph.

I am using Times New Roman 12 pt for the text font, but when I changed
that paragraph to "exactly 12 pts", the lines were cramped too close
together. Using "exactly 13 pts" made the visual spacing similar to the
other single spacing on the page (at least on the computer screen). Not
sure why.

Thanks for helping.

 

[Jeff]

See http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/BottomLine.htm, especially the
section on footnotes and the discussion of the "Keep with next"
option; and maybe
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/FootnoteOnDiffPage.htm.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

Using the info on the urls you recommended I solved my problem. Thought
to describe it for others who might need it.

For just the last paragraph on the short page I changed the paragraph
setting for "Line spacing" to "exactly 13 pts" instead of the default
"single". That pulled the next paragraph from the subsequent page to
where it belonged under that paragraph.

I am using Times New Roman 12 pt for the text font, but when I changed
that paragraph to "exactly 12 pts", the lines were cramped too close
together. Using "exactly 13 pts" made the visual spacing similar to the
other single spacing on the page (at least on the computer screen). Not
sure why.

Thanks for helping.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Actually, the default leading (spacing built into the font) for TNR is 120%,
which means that the Single line spacing is about 14.2 points. The leading
varies considerably from one font to another, but it is part of the font
design.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Jeff]

Actually, the default leading (spacing built into the font) for TNR is
120%, which means that the Single line spacing is about 14.2 points. The
leading varies considerably from one font to another, but it is part of
the font design.

Thank you. Even 13 did not seem "exactly" right. Will play more with it.

Jeff

 

[Jeff]

Actually, the default leading (spacing built into the font) for TNR is
120%, which means that the Single line spacing is about 14.2 points. The
leading varies considerably from one font to another, but it is part of
the font design.

After fixing the short page in question I noticed that the same problem
happened a page later. Is there a problem with formatting all the text
to line spacing 14.2 instead of single? Or should I restrict myself to
just the paragraphs where the problem occurs?

Thanks.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you're going to use Exactly spacing, I would recommend making it part of
the style. But be aware that you may also need to change the line spacing of
headings and other styles accordingly. Not so much a problem if you are
single spacing, but Exactly spacing puts the extra space above the baseline,
and Multiple spacing puts it below; so if you try to mix Exactly with, say,
Double, you will have inconsistencies.

Another approach, if you want to format just specific paragraphs, is to use
Multiple spacing slightly less than 100%. For example, if you want to crowd
a paragraph into a tight (vertical) squeeze, try setting Multiple line
spacing to 0.99 or less. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/FitCopy.htm for more.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Jeff]

If you're going to use Exactly spacing, I would recommend making it part
of the style. But be aware that you may also need to change the line
spacing of headings and other styles accordingly. Not so much a problem
if you are single spacing, but Exactly spacing puts the extra space
above the baseline, and Multiple spacing puts it below; so if you try to
mix Exactly with, say, Double, you will have inconsistencies.

Another approach, if you want to format just specific paragraphs, is to
use Multiple spacing slightly less than 100%. For example, if you want
to crowd a paragraph into a tight (vertical) squeeze, try setting
Multiple line spacing to 0.99 or less. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/FitCopy.htm for more.

Thank you Suzanne. You are again just wonderful.

I'll think some more about it. I've always just used single spacing but
am trying to solve this peculiar problem with the footnotes seemingly
pushing text into the next page. However it only seems to happen in one
or two places in the document so it might be overkill to format the
entire 100 page document just to solve these few discrepancies.

Also, because the 2 problem paragraph/pages happen to contain images
(figures) maybe that is what is throwing the text off and not the
footnotes. In either case the exact spacing for an individual paragraph
seems to correct the problem on these 2 occurrences.

Should I try something different (with the inserted figures) to solve
the problem instead of the "exact" spacing?

In any case, it is peculiar because I have never come across this
problem before now.

Jeff

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I agree that you can go a very long time in Word without seeing these
problems. I've been using Word since 1992, and I've been handing out the
conventional advice about Exactly spacing and footnote options for the past
ten years or so, and it has only been quite recently that I've encountered
this kind of problem personally, and in fact I think it was on a page with
an image. I think that, even when images are In Line With Text, Word has a
little more trouble getting the pagination quite right. My general advice is
to wait till editing is complete, then do whatever it takes to fix specific
pages in as inconspicuous a way as possible. This could be by minutely
changing line spacing, slightly changing the image size, editing the text to
"lose a line" or whatever.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Jeff]

I agree that you can go a very long time in Word without seeing these
problems. I've been using Word since 1992, and I've been handing out the
conventional advice about Exactly spacing and footnote options for the
past ten years or so, and it has only been quite recently that I've
encountered this kind of problem personally, and in fact I think it was
on a page with an image. I think that, even when images are In Line With
Text, Word has a little more trouble getting the pagination quite right.
My general advice is to wait till editing is complete, then do whatever
it takes to fix specific pages in as inconspicuous a way as possible.
This could be by minutely changing line spacing, slightly changing the
image size, editing the text to "lose a line" or whatever.

Thank you again.

Jeff

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You're very welcome. Good luck!

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org