Page Break Problem

[Mike Donoghue]

I think this is the correct forum for this problem. I apologize if it's not.

I'm compiling my manuscript and I am inserting page breaks at the end of the last lines of every chapter. However, I am running into a problem where the page break appears to add an extra line beneath the final sentence, leading to the current problem. I have attached a picture. Basically, instead of the last sentence of a paragraph being the final line, the page break is adding an extra line that ends up creating a blank page before the next chapter.

Does anybody know how to fix this problem? I can't find anything online.

Thanks ahead of time.

 

[Ursa major]

How are you creating the page breaks?

 

[Mike Donoghue]

How are you creating the page breaks?

By placing my cursor after the period of the last sentence in a chapter, and pressing the "Page Break" button.

 

[LordOfWizards]

What happens if you don't use page breaks? ( I don't use them.)

 

[Mike Donoghue]

What happens if you don't use page breaks? ( I don't use them.)

When a chapter gets long enough to extend onto the next page, it screws up the formatting so that each successive chapter title is not the same distance from the margin. The purpose of page breaks is to ensure the number of spaces from the top margin to "Chapter x" is the same, regardless of editing, additions or subtractions.

 

[Ursa major]

By placing my cursor after the period of the last sentence in a chapter, and pressing the "Page Break" button.

Note that:

• I use Microsoft Word, but I expect that the following may work in other WP applications.
• I don't manually insert page breaks, so haven't had the problem you've had (and thus don't know a fix for manually inserted page breaks).

What I do do (to get the first page of a chapter to look very like yours, minus the problem you're having) is to:

1. make the "Chapter N" a paragraph that must start on a new page by setting it to "Page Break Before" (in its paragraph** settings);
2. instead of using the enter key to add the blank lines above "Chapter N" (which adds a new paragraph), I insert them (nine of them instead of the eight you insert) using shift-Enter, which is a Line Feed and so makes each one part of the paragraph below... which means that the first paragraph (the one containing "Chapter N" starts at the top of the page with a string of blank lines).

** - I actually set the style of a Chapter paragraph to "Heading 1" and make that style's paragraphs to "Page Break Before"... but then I use a lot of styles (both paragraph and character) and can be a bit obsessive about it (something you might want to avoid...).

 

[LordOfWizards]

I will leave it to @Ursa major on those specifics, but my other concern is: Are you getting the submission guidelines from each publisher/agent you want to use, and have they covered this issue?

 

[Mike Donoghue]

I will leave it to @Ursa major on those specifics, but my other concern is: Are you getting the submission guidelines from each publisher/agent you want to use, and have they covered this issue?

This is standard formatting across the board.

 

[Mike Donoghue]

This

Note that:

• I use Microsoft Word, but I expect that the following may work in other WP applications.
• I don't manually insert page breaks, so haven't had the problem you've had (and thus don't know a fix for manually inserted page breaks).

What I do do (to get the first page of a chapter to look very like yours, minus the problem you're having) is to:

1. make the "Chapter N" a paragraph that must start on a new page by setting it to "Page Break Before" (in its paragraph** settings);
2. instead of using the enter key to add the blank lines above "Chapter N" (which adds a new paragraph), I insert them (nine of them instead of the eight you insert) using shift-Enter, which is a Line Feed and so makes each one part of the paragraph below... which means that the first paragraph (the one containing "Chapter N" starts at the top of the page with a string of blank lines).

** - I actually set the style of a Chapter paragraph to "Heading 1" and make that style's paragraphs to "Page Break Before"... but then I use a lot of styles (both paragraph and character) and can be a bit obsessive about it (something you might want to avoid...).

This looks like the exact solution. Hot damn, you are a genius. Thank you massively.

 

[The Judge]

I do use manual page breaks, but only occasionally, and in the circumstances I use them I'm not often at the very end of the page, so whether this is just fluke, I don't know. But if the next page is blank (ie in your case the next chapter isn't there, but you're about to start typing it) then I've found that if I engage the break immediately at the end of the final word's punctuation, the next page starts where I want. If, though, the next page is already written and I'm inserting the page break between the text afterwards, then as you say it moves things down a line, but I get over that simply by going to the first line of the next page and pressing backspace, which effectively deletes that extra line, but retains the page break order.

(On the odd occasion I have to page break when putting a longer piece together -- I write in discrete chapters so only amalgamate them when sending things out to be read -- my other option if the formatting is playing up, is to remove a line from the previous chapter! There is always something that can be pruned, and sometimes it's only a few words that need to go to shorten a paragraph, which just does enough.)