default spacing above footnotes

[Jeff Schutts]

I am trying to make small corrections to a long text that
has an already established chapters and page count. The
problem is that a couple of these small changes, for no
apparent reason, messes up my page count because the Word
program sometimes sets up the individual pages with large
white spaces between the text and the footnotes -- in
other words, whereas usually the text is just above the
footnotes, sometimes the program will stick in a couple
of blank lines between the text and footnotes. This then
disturbs my page count between chapters.

How can I override this default and control the white
space/number of lines between text and footnotes?

Thanks for you help.
Jeff

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You have to understand that Word handles footnotes pretty much the way you
would if you were doing it manually--just a heck of a lot faster and easier.
If you had ever had to type papers with footnotes, you would know how
excruciating it can be to get to the bottom of the page, type a line with a
footnote reference, and then realize that there isn't room for the footnote.
When that happens, Word moves the whole thing to the next page. That's one
possible cause of white space.

Another is the "Widow/orphan control" setting that is the default in Normal
style and all styles based on it (which is basically all of them unless
you've explicitly defined styles based on "(no style)."). If there isn't
room for at least two lines of a paragraph (all three lines of a three-line
paragraph), Word will move it to the next page.

Given the variability of both document body text and footnotes, it's just
not possible to have a completely uniform space between text and notes
unless you opt for the "Below text" setting instead of "Bottom of page," and
then your bottom margin is uneven.

From your concern about page count, I suspect that you're dealing with
chapters in separate documents. This is rarely necessary even for very long
documents.

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