Replies

Thanks, Geoff. If you format the space as “not visible,” the space doesn’t function as a space anymore. It’s as if the space doesn’t exist, so there’s never a break there.

The 1-point size is a great idea. I tried that and it makes a big difference (although the space was still noticeable), but it made me think of the kerning function, which specifically regulates horizontal spacing. Here’s what I did:

Select the space
Click Format / Font
Choose the Character Spacing tab
Under “Spacing,” choose “Condensed”
Under “By:” type 3 or 4 (or higher, except I tried 5 and it wouldn’t take)
Press OK

That narrows the space to an imperceptible width. Seems like a solution. I’ll try it awhile and see how it goes. Thanks for your help.

Russ

SJ, it still shows up with the Show/Hide either on or off. (Print preview also shows it will print.) But Geoff’s answer below helped me get to a solution. See my response to him. Thanks for your input.

Russ

Gary, I checked that post and there may be a solution in there somewhere, but I think I’ve figured out an easier one based on Geoff’s response below. See my reply to him. Thanks for your help.

Russ

I assume WordPerfect 5.2 had it since W.P. 5.1 for DOS did, although it was called something else, which I can’t remember.

Wow, great idea. I just tried copying text containing the hyphenation soft return from W.P. 9 to Word 2000. Unfortunately, the feature did not transfer over. Just for kicks, I then copied it back the other way (from Word to W.P.), but Word had stripped it out.

Gotta sign off for the night, but thanks so much for the conversation. Just like a chat room!

Russ

I just tried that, but it inserts a visible hyphen at the end of the line. I need something that makes the break but doesn’t insert a visible character. It needs to look like this:

mechanical/
chemical

Charles,

Sorry for the delay in responding. Today is my first day back in the office after being out for Christmas.

Thanks for the many links and words of advice and help. I’ll take a look at them. Yes, Word and WordPerfect couldn’t be more different from each other. I feel fairly comfortable with styles now, but looking back to when I was first given a Word document to revise (about three years ago), I wonder how I ever made it through. The program is not in any way intuitive and I simply could not figure out what was going on. I made it my business to get a book and give myself a crash course. Only then did I realize that knowing WordPerfect wasn’t much help. But there is a lot of power in Word once you know how to use it.

Russ

Thank you, Gary. –Russ

Lee,

Your advice is all well-taken. I’ve been through a lot already, both at my prior firm, which was in the middle of planning a conversion to Word when it went out of business, and at my new firm, which knows very little about the program. I’m actually considered the authority around here (the new firm), even though my experience is relatively limited. I’ve learned loads about Word just by people asking me questions and trying to find the answers.

As you say, the two programs (WordPerfect and Word) are apples and oranges. Word’s modular structure as opposed to the linearity of WordPerfect make them as incompatible as you can get. The baptism WordPerfect users get is truly one by fire–more like inferno. In my firm, we don’t do much converting from one program to the other, and if we do, we always do a Paste Special with the unformatted text option, then reconstruct the formatting in the new program. As we all know, any other method is not viable.

We do have the DocXTools and I’ve used them a little, but I don’t really know how to use them properly. I assume there are help screens that will explain a lot. We’ve been extremely busy around here for a long time, so I don’t get much time to spend teaching myself things like that.

I agree that styles are the only way to go. But most of the documents we get from clients don’t use them, which is understandable since most of those folks are word processing novices. That’s one of my biggest gripes about Word–in order to use it properly, you nearly have to be an expert user. It doesn’t lend itself to use by several levels of ability like WordPerfect does. Attorneys trying to draft a document from scratch usually end up setting it up badly, then maybe a secretary who gets it after that tries to do a little more, but since secretaries tend not to be expert enough to use styles properly, the bad formatting escalates, then by the time the word processors get it, the document really needs to be re-setup entirely. Then if a secretary has to make additions after that, she doesn’t know what to do with the advanced style setup, so she tries to add a section manually, which usually doesn’t work, and on and on. You know what I mean. One of the most-heard phrases among the word processors here is “I hate Word.” The reality of the world is that non-experts are going to be working on documents from time to time, which with Word can cause all kinds of havoc.

If you have any calming words of advice, I could use some. I believe many hours of work are wasted trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

Again, thanks so much for your generous help and the amount of time you’ve spent with me. It’s obvious you enjoy helping people. I feel the same way and get all kinds of good feelings from bailing my co-workers out of their word processing jams.

Russ

You can be sure I’ll remember this, Lee. It’s episodes like this that add up to a practical knowledge of a program. You don’t find solutions like this in books–only from the trenches.

The two law firms I’ve been with for the last 11 years have used WordPerfect, so Word is relatively new to me. However, because of the Internet and file exchange, many firms are actually switching to Word entirely. Our firm is now a “dual” shop, but eventually the tide may sweep us entirely into the Word camp.

I’m sure I’ll be posting more questions as they come up. Thanks again for your generous help.

Russ

Lee, I went through the steps you suggested and they worked. Thank you so much for staying with me this long to solve it. What I don’t understand is why those elements would affect Widow/Orphan control. Do you have any idea? –Russ

Wow, thanks, Lee. I haven’t had time yet to try what you said, but I’ll let you know as soon as I do. I hope I’ll have a chance tomorrow. –Russ

Sorry for the confusion, Beryl. The H1, H2 and H3 styles are the paragraph styles. The H1 paragraph has a section number (e.g., “1.”) followed by an underlined title, followed by one or more sentences of text. The H2 paragraph has a section number (e.g., “(a)”) followed by one or more sentences. The H3 paragraph has a section number (e.g., “(i)”) followed by one or more sentences.

(Note that not all of the H1 paragraphs have text following the title. Some consist of just the title. But the ones where I’m having the problem are the kind that have text following. Those are toward the end of the document.)

I’m going to try to attach the file to Lee’s answer below. (I say try because I’ve never done it before, but I think I can do it. Wish me luck!)

Russ

Great idea, Lee. As I told Beryl, I’m going to try to attach it. I reduced the size of the document to make it easier to deal with, but there are still two spots where the Widow/Orphan problem exists: At the top of page 6 and the top of page 12 there is a single line that has been split off from the rest of its paragraph.

Russ

Thanks, Lee. I agree that Keep With Next and Keep Lines Together are commonly misunderstood. It took me a while to learn the difference. One feature I like along those same lines is the Line Break, which when used with Keep Lines Together, lets you hold together things like address blocks or signature blocks. –Russ

Thanks, Beryl. Yes, what I mean by my description is that in some cases the first line of a multi-line paragraph is being split off from the rest of the paragraph and in other cases the last line is being split off. These are all multi-line paragraphs, not single-line headings. And I do have the “Line After” set at “12” to give me a built-in blank line following each paragraph. My single-line headings all have the Line After of 12 as well, plus they have Keep with Next to prevent the heading from being split off from the paragraph that follows it. (But those headings are not involved in my current problem. What I’m having trouble with is the multi-line paragraphs.)

Russ