Formatting woes--chapter spacing

Rhoda Nightingale · Feb 6, 2011

I looked at Cathy C's very helpful and extensive thread on formatting, which is wonderful; and at KatieMac's FAQ thread, which is also great; but I'm hitting a problem that's not covered by either of those unfortunately.

So I'm trying to format my manuscript for submission, and it's mostly going smoothly, but I have one chapter that ends on the very last line of the page. This means that my next chapter still starts at the beginning of the next page, which is how I had it before and how it needs to be, but there's no hard return between the two. When I do a hard return, I get a full sheet of white space between the chapters. I know that when I print it, no one will see the difference and it's all good. However, if I'm submitting the first few chapters electronically, something might change.

So I guess what I'm asking is which is better--to leave it the way it is, or throw in the extra white space?

Maryn · Feb 6, 2011

I only know Word2003, but the solution might be to do the page break at the end of that last line on the page. It's pretty common for it to be the only character on the next line, with results which appear identical on the printed page, but which mess up when you submit or share via email.

My best guess would be to omit the extra white space, but I'll defer to anybody who can do more than make guesses, of course.

Maryn, format stickler

scarletpeaches · Feb 6, 2011

That still happens with page breaks, Maryn.

I get that all the time. What I do is nickel-and-dime even one line out of the offending chapters. A word here, an alternative phrase there, and the deleted characters make the chapter shift up a line, and the page break/new chapter starts on the next page without the entire page of white space in between.

cryaegm · Feb 6, 2011

Have you tried using Style? (Not trying to be a sarcastic bitch here.

)

Rhoda Nightingale · Feb 6, 2011

@Scarlett: Ah-ha! That'd do it. I usually have a few superfluous "that"s floating around. Thanks!

@cryaegm: I....don't even know what that means. So no offense taken!

cryaegm · Feb 6, 2011

Rhoda Nightingale said:
@Scarlett: Ah-ha! That'd do it. I usually have a few superfluous "that"s floating around. Thanks!

@cryaegm: I....don't even know what that means. So no offense taken!

I'm assuming you're using Word?

Is it 2007 or 2010?

If not MS Word, is it Open Office Word?

Styles help with keeping the format consistent throughout Word. Take a look at this thread.

Rhoda Nightingale · Feb 7, 2011

Oh, for the love of--

Thank you. Since I'm in the midst of reformatting the whole thing anyway, now's as good a time to learn as any. Still--arrrrggghh!!

(I'm using MS Word 2003.)

Bobby · Feb 25, 2011

this may be a threadjack, but does anyone else's OpenOffice change formats when you save as a word doc? i always do an automatic .25 indention at the beginning of each paragraph, but when I save it as a word doc, that indention often goes away, and I have to reformat.

is my OO nuts, or am i?

blacbird · Feb 25, 2011

I've had that happen, too. It seems kind of random, some indentations stay, others do not, with no pattern I can discern. I've also had it do weird things with fonts, even the color, with similar randomness. It's not hard to fix, but it is an annoyance.

OpenOffice Writer also word-counts a document about 3% higher than MS-Word does. I use both because I keep a lot of documents duplicated on both my main workhorse computer, with the full MS-Office suite on it, and my little travel subnotebook, which has OpenOffice.

Formatting woes--chapter spacing

Rhoda Nightingale

Vampire Junkie

Maryn

At Sea

scarletpeaches

cryaegm

Snakecakes

Rhoda Nightingale

Vampire Junkie

cryaegm

Snakecakes

Rhoda Nightingale

Vampire Junkie

Bobby

blacbird