Paragraph and Line Breaks AND Adding Widows and Orphans (PageMaker)

Paragraph and Line Breaks:

The Paragraph Specification dialog box offers a variety of options for controlling your paragraph and line breaks.

The Keep with Next… Lines option in the Paragraph Specification dialog box will prevent your subheads from being stranded at the bottom of a column. It essentially glues two paragraphs together so they would not be separated. Keep Lines Together option prevents a paragraph from being split between two columns. This option is ideal for tables whose lines should not be separated. To start a particular section on a new page or column, use the Page Break Before or the Column Break Before option. Click in the single paragraph that should appear at the top of the page or column before turning on this option. These types of breaks are sometimes referred to as hard, or forced, breaks. The other column and page breaks are soft, and their positions will vary according to the amount and format of text in the column. Note that PageMaker has an option for controlling line breaks: Break and No Break are choices in the Line End option of the Character Specification dialog box. If you do not want a line break at a certain location in your text, you can select the text and turn on No Break. Another way to keep text from breaking onto two lines is with non-breaking or hard spaces. Instead of typing a space, press Ctrl + Shift + H between words you want to keep together.

Adding Widows and Orphans:

In PageMaker, widow and orphans are straggling words that appear at the top or bottom of a column. A widow is the beginning of a paragraph that sits at the bottom of a column. An orphan is the end of a paragraph at the top of a column.

To add widow or orphan control to existing text, first select the text. When widow or orphan control is activated, your columns may end up with ragged bottoms, but most designers prefer ragged bottoms to widow or orphans. In fact, the white space from ragged bottoms might contribute to a friendlier, more open feeling to your page.

Note that single line paragraphs, such as subheads, are not considered widows. So even if you have widow / orphan control turned on, your subheads might fall at the bottom of the column.

Setting up Column Guides:
You create columns to control the flow of text in text blocks that you place automatically, and to help position text and graphics. How you specify columns is determined by the command you use. For more details click  Setting Column Guides In Pagemaker.