The page break question

[Pavils Jurjans]

Hello,

This question has bugged me for ages...

It's about the nature of things like page-breaks (or page breaking
section-breaks), and column-breaks.

In most documents, I try to be consistent with designing a style sheet, and
using styles. Thus, a typical document would consist from stream of
paragraphs that are a mix of heading styles and normal style. I try not to
use an empty paragrapth for formatting purposes (ie, extra whitespace
between paragraphs, or extra space between paragraph body and heading), but
I edit the paragraph style properties instead. So, when the situation comes,
that either the paragraph title is so close tho the end of the page, that
there is space left for zero or less than five rows of paragraph body, I'd
like to insert the pagebreak before the tite row. I switch the special
character visibility on (the "paragraph symbol" toolbar button).

Let's use the example of simple doc, consisting of 4 paragraphs (and zero
empty paragraphs), with applied styles, correspondingly, Heading1, normal,
Heading1, normal.

If I go to the second heading paragraph, the leftmost position, and insert
pagebreak there, I get two page doc. The first page ends with a row, that
has Heading1 style, but the only element in that row is "Page Break". Thus,
it appears that the page break is sort of like zero-size character with
special behaviour, that it splits the page. It seems like it's an
"inline-level" element, because if I go tho the last row of the first page,
and change the paragraph style to, say, Heading2, it also affects the style
of forst row of the second page. But, I would expect, that the page-break
element is a zero-size "paragraph-level" element, not the "inline-level"
element, because it's conceptually wrong to have a row in the first page,
with Heading1 style applied. If I now edit the Heading1 style, so that it
has background color, the whole row in the first page will be colored in
that color.

So I don't see a way how to have the very first row in the after-page-break
page in Heading1 style, not having the last row in the first page in the
same style (thus having problems with background-colored heading styles).
The current solution I am using (and not satisfied with), is to have an
extra blank row in the second page, in Normal style. And, if I want it to
take as little vertical space as possible, I can decrease it's font size.

I hope I'm clrearly describing the problem. The answer may be is very
simple, so don't bash me to much. But, note that this is not a trivial
question either.

Regrads,

Pavils

 

[garfield-n-odie]

Hi, Pavils. Instead of using a page break to force the a certain heading to the next page, try selecting the heading paragraph and formatting it to include "keep together" and "keep with next" in Format | Paragraph | Line and Page Breaks. You can apply manual formatting to a certain heading, or you can modify the heading style so that it always has this formatting.

 

[Stefan Blom]

You can use "Keep with next" (on the Line and Page Breaks tab of the
Paragraph dialog box) to keep a heading with the following paragraph.
This formatting is enabled by default for the built-in heading styles,
but it can of course be included in any style.

And you can use "Keep lines together" (on the Line and Page Breaks tab
of the Paragraph dialog box) to prevent paragraphs from being split
over a page break. If you want this formatting for the headings,
simply modify them to include it. If, in addition, you want to "Keep
lines together" for each paragraph following a heading, you can create
a style named (say) "Body Text First" which includes the "Keep lines
together" formatting and apply it to the appropriate paragraphs. For
future use, you can set the "Style for following paragraph" of the
relevant heading(s) to "Body Text First" which will make it a lot
easier to apply the formatting as needed. (The "Body Text First" style
should, in turn, have its "Style for following paragraph" set to "Body
Text" or whatever style you are using for the main body of your
document.)

 

[Pavils Jurjans]

Hello,

This indeed works for page-breaks, but there is no similar feature for
forcing column-break though.

-- Pavils

Hi, Pavils. Instead of using a page break to force the a certain heading

to the next page, try selecting the heading paragraph and formatting it to
include "keep together" and "keep with next" in Format | Paragraph | Line
and Page Breaks. You can apply manual formatting to a certain heading, or
you can modify the heading style so that it always has this formatting.

 

[garfield-n-odie]

You can apply "keep together" and "keep with next" formatting to several consecutive paragraphs in a column to force them to appear together at the top of a column.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

To get around the issue of the page break inheriting the formatting
(including shading) of the heading, apply the "Page break before" property
to the heading in question instead of inserting a manual page break.

 

[Pavils Jurjans]

Hi,

Yes, I see how that could be done.. But, in fact, these solutions all are
kind of workarounds. I don't really get why MS has designed the page break
as inline symbol rather than block level symbol. I see no sense in that.

-- Pavils

You can apply "keep together" and "keep with next" formatting to several

consecutive paragraphs in a column to force them to appear together at the
top of a column.