Page breaks - which one?

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Guest

Bonehead question here. Word has two ways to make a 'hard' page break:
Insert / Page Break... and Format / Paragraph / Page Break Before. Is there
any hard-and-fast rule as to which one should be used, and when? Thanks.
 
Insert /PageBreak is meant for a one-time operation - use it at the point
where you want to leave the rest of the page blank. It is the same as the
keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Enter.
Format/Parag/PageBreakBefore is really meant to be put into a parag style.
Then every parag that gets that style will begin on a new page. It's
especially useful for formatting high-level headings such as chapter titles.
 
Thanks, TedMi, that is a good answer. I see applications in what I'm doing
for both, so from now on I will incorporate the paragraph-format break into
chapter titles, rather than inserting before.

Jim
 
Jim said:
Bonehead question here. Word has two ways to make a 'hard' page
break: Insert / Page Break... and Format / Paragraph / Page Break
Before. Is there any hard-and-fast rule as to which one should be
used, and when? Thanks.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't call it a hard-and-fast rule, but there is a reason to prefer the
paragraph formatting -- especially when you make it part of a paragraph
style (http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/PageBreakBeforeHeading.htm) --
instead of the Insert > Page Break (for which the shortcut is Ctrl+Enter).
If you want the document to be uniform, and always start a new page with,
say, each Heading 1, the style will ensure that.

Insert > Page break is best reserved for situations where you want a
temporary break that you'll soon remove. For example, if you're setting up a
template with "Different first page" and "Different even and odd" headers
and footers, you need to have at least one page of each type to be able to
edit those headers/footers. You can insert the breaks, set up the
headers/footers, and remove the breaks before saving the template.

There's also a third way to break the page, Insert > Break > Next page
(section break).

The Keep Together and Keep With Next paragraph formatting also help to
determine where page breaks occur. These are "intelligent" in the sense that
the break occurs only when needed.
 
To add to what Jay has said, "Page break before" is preferable even when
applied as direct formatting (not part of the style). When you use a manual
page break (Ctrl+Enter), the page break (which can be seen in the document,
unlike a "soft" page break or one inserted by "Page break before") acquires
the formatting of the following paragraph. If this happens to include
shading, the page break will be shaded. Worse still, you'll get peculiar
results in your TOC if you have a page break formatted as Heading 1.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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