Lines per page changes!

[tsbarr]

I am preparing a document in Word 2003 for a book. The page settings are
5.06" wide and 7.81" high, and the margins are 1" top and bottom, and .75"
right and left. My font is Times New roman 12pt, and my line spacing is
16pt. For some reason, the number of lines per page is not consistent, and
it's not because I have an extra <enter> or any other character. Most of the
full pages have 26 lines, but some end up with 25 and occasionally 24. It
looks odd in a book when the left page has 26 lines and the right has 24 or
25. The reader is going to expect some kind of break in the narrative, but
the narrative is continuous. Just as a test, I changed to single line
spacing and to a more even page size (5.25 x 8) and the problem persisted.
Can anyone tell me how to fix this so I have the same number of lines per
full page?

Thanks!
Tim

 

[grammatim]

You have Widow and Orphan Control turned on in Format > Paragraph >
second tab. It keeps you from having a single line of a paragraph
alone at the top or bottom of a page. This is generally a Bad Thing,
so one way to both avoid widows & orphans and keep your page lengths
even is to find a paragraph above the problem (it can be on a previous
page) that has just a few letters on its last line, select that whole
paragraph, and use the second tab on the Format > Character pane to
"Condense" the type (moving the letters closer together) by a tiny
amount, so as to save a line. This should only be done paragraph-by-
paragraph. but if you'd rather live with widows & orphans, go to
Styles & Formatting, right-click the name of your regular text style
(Normal? Body Text?), choose Modify, and go to Format > Paragraph and
uncheck Widows and Orphans on the second tab. Your document might get
a page shorter!

 

[Jay Freedman]

I am preparing a document in Word 2003 for a book. The page settings are
5.06" wide and 7.81" high, and the margins are 1" top and bottom, and .75"
right and left. My font is Times New roman 12pt, and my line spacing is
16pt. For some reason, the number of lines per page is not consistent, and
it's not because I have an extra <enter> or any other character. Most of the
full pages have 26 lines, but some end up with 25 and occasionally 24. It
looks odd in a book when the left page has 26 lines and the right has 24 or
25. The reader is going to expect some kind of break in the narrative, but
the narrative is continuous. Just as a test, I changed to single line
spacing and to a more even page size (5.25 x 8) and the problem persisted.
Can anyone tell me how to fix this so I have the same number of lines per
full page?

Thanks!
Tim

See http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/BottomLine.htm.

 

[tsbarr]

Thanks for the responses....they were both helpful. I actually had a couple
of issues: Window/Orphan control was indeed on, and I had an extra <enter>
)sometimes two) in my header. Now the pages are perfecto!

Thanks again!
Tim