Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Word 2007 question (old topic revisited)

This is topic Word 2007 question (old topic revisited) in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by darklight (Member # 5213) on :

Can someone tell why in my Word doc, sometimes I have 25 lines per page, sometimes 26, and other times 27?

This is in the same document, in the same story. It's for a WofT entry and I don't want to send it off and have it disqualified due to odd page set up. Anyone know what's going on?

Posted by ChrisOwens (Member # 1955) on :

I believe you should do something like this:

Under paragraph -> Line Spacing -> Line Spacing Options -> Spacing after Exactly at 25

You might also need to ensure that widows and orphans are turned off.

Posted by darklight (Member # 5213) on :

Chris, thank you for that. I turned off the windows/orphan thing and I now have twenty six lines per page!

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

26 lines per page is fine, darklight.

Word varied the number of lines in order to prevent widows and orphans (when the first line or last line of a paragraph is at the bottom or top of the page by itself).

I remember being on a panel for new writers with the great Poul Anderson. After he listened to the rest of us talk about manuscript formatting for awhile, he pointed out that while having a well-formatted manuscript was important, the story was more important, and editors would not reject a story because of things like the number of lines on each page. (For one thing, they don't have time to count the lines.)

Patrick Nielsen Hayden and other editors have said similar things. In fact, some editors have warned that sometimes writers worry more about how the manuscript looks than about how the story reads, and they are focussing their energy in the wrong place.

K.D. Wentworth has taught elementary school for many years, and she has been a writer for most of those years. She knows how it is with manuscripts and with submitting and with being human.

Posted by InarticulateBabbler (Member # 4849) on :

I've had at least one email discussion with David Wolverton about the very subject of lines and margins. He said MSWord could sometimes ba a little off like that and suggested this setting (Which has my current WIP at exactly 25 lines per page):

Left Margin: 1 inch
Right Margin: 1.5 inch
Top Margin: 1 inch
Bottom Margin: .5 inch

His instructions were with the "line after" at 0. It's worked like a dream ever since.

Chris does have good manuscript formatting information.

[This message has been edited by InarticulateBabbler (edited September 23, 2008).]

Posted by darklight (Member # 5213) on :

I got a bit worried because it looked odd on the page. If I noticed there was a bigger margin at the botton of some pages than others, then I assumed someone else would.

Thanks, all. I'll try out that setting IB.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

New question: Does MS Word have a reset button (the way browsers let you reload a webpage)?

I tried to open a Word 2007 document in Word 2000 (which I thought had been "updated" with that "file format converter" MS offers), but the document had huge gaps of blank pages.

So I told the person who had sent me the 2007 document, and they saved it in 2000 format and recent it. It still looks the same, even after I reinstalled the file format converter.

I am wondering if my Word 2000 is just opening the same old 2007 document and not the new 2000 version. Is there a way to reset it, or do I have to rename the 2000 version?

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

Never mind. I discovered that if I changed my view from print layout to normal layout, I could see the rest of the document.

Can you say, "I love MS Word?"

No, I can not!