Top-of-page space before paragraphs

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Word used to be clever enough to realise that paragraphs or headings that start at the top of a page should not have space before applied. In version 2007 this seems not to be the case did it regain it’s inteligence in version 2010? Or can anyone explain why Microsoft stopped it working?

Regards

Terry Kinnard

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Word used to be clever enough to realise that paragraphs or headings that start at the top of a page should not have space before applied.

I think this is governed by one of the compatibility options. You may need to poke around a bit to find those in the new Word Options dialog/window, maybe under Display or Advanced.

Edit: Or maybe not. See: Eliminating “Before Spacing” at the Top of a Page (Microsoft Word).

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Is it just me or do others think as I do, that this is in fact, an error!

I can see no logical reason why anyone would want to insert space before the first paragraph printed or dispayed at the top of a page. This will just make the top of page occur at a semi-random distance down the page.

Regards

Terry

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I would agree with you Terry! Seems like a crazy error to me. If I set the top margin of a page to 2 inches, I would expect the first line of text to start at the 2 inch mark, irregardless of extra spacing applied above it.

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If you use the PageBreakBefore paragraph attribute to start a new page, then the Space Before is automatically suppressed. You can add the ParaPageBreakBefore shortcut to your QAT for easy application. If these are Headings that always need to start at the top of a new page, then apply the PPBB attribute to the Heading Style.

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Though there are ways to force Word to ignore space before on paragraphs that start on a new page (in some cases). I can’t see any valid reason for seeing the failure to ignore space before at the head of page as an error. I can’t think of any circumstances that one would want the top of the text to appear at a semi random distance from the top of the page. Surely thats why we specify margins. I would expect space before only to be honoured between paragraphs in the body of the text and not if this stradled a page break.

Regards

Terry

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No arguments from me there as I can’t think of a valid reason to want para space after to cross the page end. It’s quite illogical. But I bet you anything that if MS change this, there will be a party of users that will complain because Space after is being suppressed!

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Well I will put my hand up and say that I quite like the way that I can choose to honour the space before paragraphs in some cases and not in others. I can see that some people would find this illogical but I think that the logic is actually quite sound and I appreciate that Microsoft have set the behaviour this way.

If I create a style for a heading and include space before then I expect that to occur only when there is text above it on the page. If the heading happens to fall to the first line of a new page then I don’t require the extra spacing and I am happy it is ignored in this case. HOWEVER, if I did include in the heading style the setting for ‘Page Break Before’ then I do want the paragraph space before to be upheld (otherwise space before would be unusable in this case). I would be unhappy if I couldn’t space my headings down the page if they ALWAYS appeared at the top of the page.

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Though I still can’t see why you would want to have the a normal heading or paragraph NOT at the top of a new page, I can see that there may be styles that you would want to offset from the top of a new page such as book titles or other paragraphs that may need to be halfway down a page. But I’m sure that Microsoft could have accomodated this without having to break the normal processing that says at the top of a new page, before spacing will not be honoured. I would think that the requirement for space before to be honoured is special enough just to give an option to force the honouring of space before for specific styles and only if selected.

The not honouring space before is after all how it worked before and was (I would contend) in the majority of cases what people would have wanted to continue being the case.

Regards

Terry

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Word 2003 Tools / Options / compatibility tab
Word 2007 Office button / Word Options button / Advanced Option / Layout Options (right at very bottom, you have to click on it to expand the list)
Word 2010 File tab / Options / Advanced option / Layout Options (right at very bottom, you have to click on it to expand the list)

Try turning on one or more or all of these options:

“Suppress extra line spacing at bottom of page”
“Suppress extra line spacing at the top of page”
“Suppress extra line spacing at top of page the way Word 5.x for the Mac does”
“Suppress extra line spacing the way WordPerfect 5.x does”
“Suppress Space Before after a hard page or column break”

Turning on the options will only affect the current document. If you want them to be applied to new documents, you will have to open NORMAL.DOT template for editing, make the changes and save them. Even with the change saved in NORMAL.DOT, it will not be applied to existing documents. You will have to change them one at at time (good task for a recorded macro … )

One of my favorite layout options is “Do full justification the way WordPerfect 6.x for Windows does”. By default, Word is very “dumb” when doing full justification. It inserts full space characters between the words. The WP way also slightly expands the spacing between letters in words, much more subtle.

Does anyone know specifically what this option does?
“Use Line Breaking Rules”?

Does anyone have a link to a resource that defines / explains the various compatibility Options. The problem is that many of them were added long ago, they are not documented, and most people do not know what they do.

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I primarily use Word 2007 and I, too, use layout options and always check two items:

Don’t center “exact line height” lines.
Don’t use HTML paragraph auto spacing.

I set up a Heading style with 12 pt space before. At the beginning of the document, Word respected the 12 pt before, dropping the Heading slightly.

However, the Heading that fell at the top of the next page had the 12 pt before suppressed.

Just sayin’

Best, Kim

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It’s an old thread, but I’m inclined to represent a POV that wasn’t represented before. I can see a good reason not to suppress extra space at the top of a page:

I have a body text style with exactly 14pt. line spacing. My header has 14pt. line spacing, with 7pt. above and 7pt. below. This comes to exactly 28pts. of space, and I want it exactly that way every time, at the start of a page or otherwise. Why? Because, when I print facing pages, I want the body text to align perfectly every time. If the 7pts. were suppressed before a heading at the top of the page, this would effectively shift the entire text up by 7 pts. Looking at a single page of text, no one would see any difference. But in a book, the alignment of facing pages would be completely destroyed.

To me, if we’re talking logic, it seems most logical that when I set a style to have space before a paragraph, I actually get that space. It isn’t automatically suppressed. If I especially want to rid myself of that extra space, then I should have to actively do something, such as changing the paragraph formatting where needed, or electing to suppress all extra space at top of pages by clicking an option. The default should NOT be to suppress the style settings which I’ve elected.

Nonetheless, thanks for the info on the page, which helped me understand what the option is all about, and the reasons why some would want to use it.

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Word used to be clever enough to realize that paragraphs or headings that start at the top of a page should not have space before applied. In version 2007 this seems not to be the case did it regain it’s intelligence in version 2010? Or can anyone explain why Microsoft stopped it working?
Regards
Terry Kinnard

Well, I found a clean stable solution for Word 2013 and 2016 too. I described it in the following article and tested on my manuscripts. It allows you to use styles: no manual modification of paragraphs.

How to add space before a heading in Word 2013 and 2016 (English version of article)

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You could, of course, use a Word 2010 template. That way, you get access to the 2010 & earlier compatibility options… Similarly, if you put the document into Compatibility Mode, the old layout engine will be used. You could also use a Section break preceding the heading, rather than a page break. So many options to choose from – and none of them require the circumlocution of frames!

To apply the W0rd 2010 Compatibility Mode, press Alt+F11 to open the macro editor, and press Ctrl+G to open the Immediate window at the bottom of the editor. In that window, paste this line and then press Enter:
ActiveDocument.SetCompatibilityMode wdWord2010
Close the macro editor. Then open the Options dialog, go to the Advanced options, and scroll to the bottom. Change the dropdown “Lay out this document as if created in” to “Microsoft Word 2010”. At that point, the list of 2010 layout options will appear below the dropdown, and the “Suppress extra line spacing at top of page” option will be in that list.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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