Dissertation Headings and Footnotes

[Martha Bowes]

I am finalizing a dissertation for final submission. Everything is done
except for ensuring all footnotes have the correct spacing between them
(i.e., a line space between each one on the same page, but no line space
occurring before the first or after the last on the same page. When the
document was edited, these line spaces moved around and got screwed up. I
also need to be sure no headings occur at the bottom of a page (some
currently do). So, if I fix the headings I expect it to screw up the
footnote line spaces, but if I fix the footnote line spaces I expect it to
change the headings. Is there something I should know to avoid this vicious
circle?

Also, Word puts a different amount of space before the footnotes separator
on different pages - anywhere from about 1.5 inches to .5 inches. Is this
normal and I should leave as is? Or should I do something about it? When it
appears there is too much space, I can't delete line spaces created by Word
that don't appear in the nonprinting characters.

Any advice?

TIA

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You must not be using Word's built-in heading styles, since they are all
formatted as "Keep with next" by default. That's what you need to ensure
that your headings stay with the following text.

You can take care of your footnote spacing by adding some Space After (say 6
pts) to the Footnote Text style. This space will be suppressed at the bottom
of the page, so you won't have any space after the last footnote or above
the first but will have space between footnotes.

There is nothing you can do to make the space between text and footnotes
absolutely uniform unless you place the footnotes "Below text" instead of
"Bottom of page," and then the bottom margin will not be uniform. Factors
that contribute to the variation are double spacing and widow/orphan
control. If you have your text double spaced, then every line that moves to
the next page actually represents two lines. If you have a three-line
paragraph that won't fit on the bottom of one page, then widow/orphan
control will push the whole paragraph to the next page, leaving six empty
lines at the bottom of the previous page. If there is a heading preceding
this paragraph, you can add at least two more lines for the heading, plus
whatever Space Before the heading style has.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

Martha, you may also want to check out this article, to pre-empt a possible
problem:

"Why do my footnotes sometimes end up on a different page
from their references in the text?
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Formatting/FootnoteOnDiffPage.htm

Dayo

You must not be using Word's built-in heading styles, since they are all
formatted as "Keep with next" by default. That's what you need to ensure
that your headings stay with the following text.

You can take care of your footnote spacing by adding some Space After (say 6
pts) to the Footnote Text style. This space will be suppressed at the bottom
of the page, so you won't have any space after the last footnote or above
the first but will have space between footnotes.

There is nothing you can do to make the space between text and footnotes
absolutely uniform unless you place the footnotes "Below text" instead of
"Bottom of page," and then the bottom margin will not be uniform. Factors
that contribute to the variation are double spacing and widow/orphan
control. If you have your text double spaced, then every line that moves to
the next page actually represents two lines. If you have a three-line
paragraph that won't fit on the bottom of one page, then widow/orphan
control will push the whole paragraph to the next page, leaving six empty
lines at the bottom of the previous page. If there is a heading preceding
this paragraph, you can add at least two more lines for the heading, plus
whatever Space Before the heading style has.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.