vertical alignment problem

[joshavery]

Hello,

I am having difficulty with vertical alignment. I am preparing a
document which I will have printed out 2 pages per sheet, and I want
the top and bottom lines both aligned from left to right across both
pages on the sheet, as one would see in a book.

I find that by setting the vertical alignment to "justified" I end up
with the top lines all aligning just fine. But the bottom lines are
not aligned. There is more space at the bottoms of the odd pages than
the even pages. Strangely, the odd pages align with each other just
fine, and the even pages also align with each other, as I can see from
examining a print preview. But that leaves me with every sheet having
more blank space underneath the odd than the even pages.

Could this have to do with the fact that I have different
headers/footers for odd and even pages, as well as a different
header/footer for the first page?

Thanks so much for any ideas.

Josh

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You'll see the problem immediately if you display nonprinting characters.
I'm guessing you pasted text from one footer into the other. When you do
this, no matter how carefully you select all but the paragraph mark when
copying and include the paragraph mark when pasting, you will still
invariably get an extra, empty paragraph. Delete this, and you should be
good to go.

 

[joshavery]

Suzanne,

Thank you, that was very instructive and helpful. After deleting extra
pagraph markers, it is aligning much better than it was.

Unfortunately, it still does not line up exactly from left to right on
every sheet of two pages (I am setting up to print 2 pages per sheet).
It always begins aligning well at the top but then in some cases
becomes slightly misaligned as the text flows down. As I track it, I
can see that the paragraph indents are sometimes not moving the line in
regular increments, i.e., not precisely one extra line space down. The
result is that the text ends up misaligned at the bottom when one scans
left to right across the two pages.

What's very odd is that this problem does not occur on all sheets. On
most sheets, the two pages begin and end with perfect alignment
(beginning and ending is my only concern). I only have the problem on
two sheets.

Anything you would suggest trying?

Thank you,

Josh

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Not sure what you mean by "paragraph indents," but if there are headings
involved, then you need to tweak the Spacing Before/After so that a heading
and the space around it are equivalent to an even multiple (two, say) of
normal body text lines.

 

[joshavery]

Sorry, I used the wrong term. I just meant paragraph breaks. I am
not using any headings, just the same size font text across all pages.
The only alteration is that some of the words are in bold. I have the
spacing before/after set to zero (on both) throughout the document and
"single spacing" also selected. I don't see why paragraph breaks
(created by hitting "enter") under those settings would produce
anything other than exactly one line space per break, but it seems to
be doing so, based on what my eyes are telling me. The blank space
produced by hitting "enter" does not seem to be consistently the same.
Is there any other setting to try?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If the text contains anything that might cause the line spacing to vary
(subscript, superscript, symbols, different font size, etc.), then you have
two choices:

1. Set an Exact line spacing amount. The default Single spacing for Times
New Roman is approximately 120% of the nominal point size (12 points for
10-pt TNR, for example). Other fonts will vary.

2. Check the Compatibility Options for settings that keep Word from adding
space for raised/lowered characters, underlines, etc.

Also, keep in mind that the proof of the pudding is in the eating: although
Word does a reasonable job of presenting a WYSIWYG view in Print Preview, it
will never be 100% accurate, so base any judgments on actual printout. Also,
if a uniform bottom margin is the issue, see
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/BottomLine.htm.

 

[joshavery]

Suzanne,

What a wonderfully informative and clearly written document. This is
extremely helpful, thank you!

Josh

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Glad I could help!