"Proper" way to create large white spaces?

[Bob]

I understand that it is best to use paragraph "space before" and
"space after" formatting, to create separation between paragraphs.

But what about a case where you are creating, say, a new chapter where
you want the text to begin half way down the page? (a really large
"space before") Is it proper or "correct" to insert a series of empty
paragraph marks to get to mid page, or is there a better way to do
this using Styles or paragraph formattng?

Thanks

 

[TF]

Bob

There are several ways to do this 'correctly' (and incorrectly!).

If you start each new chapter with a Chapter Title, you can create a Style
called ChapterTitle and part of its parameters will be a large Space After
setting.

If you start each chapter as a new Section, you could use the Different
First Page option and set a large margin for the first page: this is best
achieved by opening the first page header and putting in a large Space After
setting again.

There are a myriad of way to do this but the ChapterTitle Style way is
probably the most correct solution. Unless it is absolutely vital, you
should avoid creating new sections when there are alternative solutions that
avoid section breaks. So if you go a step further with your ChapterTitle
style, you can add the Page Break Before attribute avoiding the need to
insert a manual page break.

--
Terry Farrell - Word MVP
http://www.mvps.org/word/

I understand that it is best to use paragraph "space before" and
"space after" formatting, to create separation between paragraphs.

But what about a case where you are creating, say, a new chapter where
you want the text to begin half way down the page? (a really large
"space before") Is it proper or "correct" to insert a series of empty
paragraph marks to get to mid page, or is there a better way to do
this using Styles or paragraph formattng?

Thanks

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I do this in one of two ways:

1. I start each chapter with an Odd Page section break and format the
Chapter Number or Chapter Title style (whichever comes first) with a large
amount of Space Before.

2. In situations where the chapter title block may vary in depth (where
titles may run to two lines, for example, or there is a display quotation
that creates variability in depth), I've found it works very well to put the
chapter number and title in a borderless table cell with Exact row height.
With this approach, even without a section break, you can format the first
paragraph as "Page break before," and, even if you have Space Before
suppressed after hard page breaks, you'll still get the Space Before because
the paragraph is in a table. The Exact row height of the table cell assures
that the first line of chapter text will always fall in the same place
regardless of how many lines you have in the chapter title, display quote,
etc.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
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