Forum Discussion
Bottom balancing in Word? (typesetting)
fresiegrant On the Layout tab of the Page Setup dialog, set the Page>Vertical alignment to "Justified"
For a page that is one of two lines short, it will probably be OK, but not if the page is many lines short.
fresiegrant On the Layout tab of the Page Setup dialog, set the Page>Vertical alignment to "Justified"
For a page that is one of two lines short, it will probably be OK, but not if the page is many lines short.
Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP , that was a great solution to bottom balancing! Thanks. However, I see that seems to only add spacing between paragraphs, rather than adjusting the leading or line spacing for the whole page. When paragraph spacing is supposed to be zero (for consistent line spacing across the page), is there a way to change this behavior so it achieves the bottom balancing via shifting line spacing rather than paragraph spacing?
This is important for books (especially fiction) and many other professional publishing settings where there should be no extra spacing between paragraphs, just indents to delineate paragraphs.
I do not think that I have ever come across a book that had anything other than the same number of lines on each page, other than the last page of a chapter (and in many cases, the first page)
Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP , as it seems there is no current way to handle this important design requirement (bottom balancing to address the line removal by widow and orphan control smoothly spread out over all lines on the page rather than injecting extra space only between paragraphs), I have added feedback to request this. If there is no solution, please consider upvoting this at:
https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/d1dd444e-d0b1-f111-aad1-000d3a02f23c
Note that fact that you never noticed the number of lines changing (obviously it does when a widow or orphan is removed) is a testament to how invisible this is to readers when done correctly by just spreading all the lines out ever-so-slightly.
Of course, if I'm mistaken and there is a way to do this that I'm just missing, please advise. That would be great, and I'd start using it immediately.
