Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

Print Layout

Word automatically flows text from line to line and page to page. Nice, huh? However, an important part of document design is placing text right where you want it, breaking it up, and generally controlling the flow.

Inserting Breaks

A break is an invisible barrier that stops your text in its tracks, and then starts it again on a new line, column, or page.

Paragraph break

In Word, pressing Return (or Enter) creates a paragraph break. Although you may not have been aware of the term, they’re created every time you end a paragraph. Unless you’ve chosen a different “following paragraph” style (see Creating Styles by Example), the new paragraph assumes the same formatting as the previous.

Line break

Pressing Shift-Return inserts a line break. It’s similar to a paragraph break except that the text on the new line remains part of the original paragraph, and retains its style and paragraph formatting. No matter how you edit the surrounding text, the line break remains where you inserted it—until you remove it, of course.

Page break

Choose Insert → Break → Page Break (or press Shift-Enter) to force a hard page break. No matter how much text you add above the break, the text after the break will always appear at the top of a new page.

Use a page break when your want to start a new topic at the top of the next page. If you’re writing a manual for your babysitters, for example, inserting a hard page break at the end of the How to operate the home theater system section that causes The care ...