Footnotes float off the bottom of the page

[icemanandsuereel]

I have a moderately long document (307 pages right now) with a problem
in the footnotes. They don't fall down to the bottom margin of the
page. Instead, they float about a half inch above the bottom margin.
This document is not particularly complex. It has eight chapters and
about 10 front and back matter sections. Each chapter or section is in
its own section so I can control the headers and footers, but I'm not
doing much in there yet. The entire text has just one column and there
are are only about 15 tables and 10 graphic elements (pictures and
equations).
I'm using Word 2008 on Tiger (10.4.11). The individual chapters
originated in Word 2007 on either XP or Vista. Looking back at the
original versions of the chapters, I see that the footnotes are in the
correct position. I can also copy text that includes some footnotes
and paste it into a new document and get the footnotes in the right
place. However, if I copy and paste a section break with the text, all
the footnotes in the new document float off the bottom margin, even if
I then delete all the text in the new document and start from scratch
by just inserting a new footnote.
I have done a lot of work on this text and much of it is lost if I
revert to the original chapters or paste it into a new document. Does
anyone have any ideas on how to get the footnotes to go back down to
the bottom of the page?

 

[icemanandsuereel]

Well, I have solved my own problem with a little more digging. It
turns out that the footnote continuation line was causing the extra
space. Setting it to a line spacing of exactly 0.7 pt largely
eliminates the problem. When will Microsoft produce really usable
software?