I’m writing a paper for university, and since the page limit is pretty strict and I need some space for my lengthy remarks, I don’t want to waste any space needlessly. But Word (I’m using Word 2000 on an XP system) does so many idiotic things automatically that eat up space.
For example, if I start a paragraph in the last line of a page, Word will push this line to the beginning of the next page, apparently because it doesn’t want to have a single line at the end of the page. I agree that this would look poor, but it’s a line I could very well put to another use.
Sometimes Word also pushes half a paragraph to the next page, wasting maybe three or four lines at the end of a page, apparently because having it where I want it to have would result in a single line at the top of the next page.
Manually changing this doesn’t work, as Word always pushes it back automatically.
Unfortunatley this is somewhat complicated by the fact that I have a German version if Word, and the designations of the various menus and checkboxes is different. I think I found what was meant with orphan control, but if I highlight the two paragraphs I want to keep together and deactivate the checkbox I think is orphan control (Format/Paragraphs), Word is idiotic enough to push both paragraphs to the next page instead of pulling the second one up to the first page as far as possible :mad:
Word is not idiotic (at least not in this case). It is doing exactly what you are telling it to do. If you highlight two paragraphs and turn off orphan control, Word is going to put those TWO paragraphs where they will fit. If they won’t BOTH fit on Page 1, Word will move them to Page 2 - which is exactly what you told Word to do by highlighting BOTH paragraphs and turning off Orphan Control.
You will probably need to turn off Widow/Orphan for the entire document, not just for random paragraphs.
Or could it be something with the paragraphs or style? Such as, you have it set to have 24 spaces before a paragraph. If there’s not enough space at the bottom to have 24 spaces before AND a line of text, the paragraph will pop to the next page.
A good option, if you don’t need to use tables, pictures or fancy lettering, is to switch to Wordpad. It doesn’t have any of the cute functionality… but it also won’t try to correct your work.
Whenever I write documents in Spanish being in another country, I use Wordpad. Word keeps trying to switch back to whatever its default language is (even after I’ve told the stupid thing “this document is in Spanish (Traditional Sort)”), so the document looks a lot like an Italian flag on screen.
For the widow/orphan control thing, make sure to -UN-check it without having any paragraphs selected. Or with the whole document selected, but it’s easier to just not select and it works better too. Same goes for line spacing, spaces after/before paragraphs, etc. That way it will be applied to every paragraph you keep on writing, to any changes you make to what you already wrote, etc.
If you select the “bad” paragraphs, change them, and then change what went before, you will have to do it again. Comfort on the language problems. I learned to use MSOffice in English and have used it in 4 other languages. I can find my way through the menus: things are in the same position, even though they don’t have the same name. But I’d really like to know who’s the genius who decided to change the keyboard shortcuts. Every time I forget I’m in Spanish and hit “ctrl+b” for “bold”, it goes to “search” instead!
My advice is to uncheck ALL autoformatting options. They are a pain in the ass. Word tries to think for you, and unfortunately its stupid as hell. Unclick every option relating to formatting that you can find, and you’ll probably be happier in the end.
I tried unchecking orphan control with both the entire document and nothing at all selected, and it didn’t make too much of a difference; still several wasted lines at the bottoms of several pages. Guess I should have turned off the autoformatting before beginning to type, but now, with 19 pages already written, it’s hard to change mistakes from the past. The problem is made worse by the dozens of footnotes which take up space at the bottom of the pages as well.
I switched to a different software (OpenOffice), which includes less features and is graphically more modest than Word, but at least it’s easier to shut the “your software is trying to type your texts for you” options.
Anyway, thanks for the advice, guys! It was a good deal of help to me.