When you add more content than will fit within the document’s top and bottom margins, Word creates a new page by inserting a soft page break. A soft page break produces separate pages in Print Layout view and is displayed as a horizontal line in Draft view.
If you want to control how pages break, you can insert a manual page break in either of these ways:
A manual page break produces separate pages in Print Layout view, and appears as a horizontal line, with the words Page Break at the midpoint of the line, in Draft view.
Tip
As you edit the text in a document, Word changes the location of the soft page breaks but not of any manual page breaks you might have inserted.
You can control whether page breaks leave widows and orphans—individual lines that appear on a different page from their paragraphs. A widow is the last line of a paragraph at the top of a page, and an orphan is the first line of a paragraph at the bottom of a page. These single lines of text can make a document hard to read, so by default Word specifies a two-line minimum. You can change the following options on the Line And Page Breaks page of the Paragraph dialog box displayed when you click Paragraph on the Format menu:
Widow/Orphan Control. This option controls whether Word will break a page with the last line of a paragraph by itself at the top of a page or the first line of a paragraph by itself at the bottom of a page. This option is turned on by default for all new documents.
Keep With Next. This option controls whether Word will break a page between the selected paragraph and the following paragraph.
Keep Lines Together. This option controls whether Word will break a page within a paragraph.
Page Break Before. This option controls whether Word will break a page before the selected paragraph.
Tip
You can apply the options in the Paragraph dialog box to individual paragraphs, or you can incorporate them into the styles you define for document elements such as headings. For more information about styles, see "Work with Styles" in Chapter 7.
In addition to page breaks, you can insert section breaks in your documents. A section break identifies a part of the document to which you can apply page settings, such as orientation or margins, that are different from those of the rest of the document. For example, you might want to turn a large table sideways.
You can insert a section break by pointing to Break on the Insert menu and then clicking the type of section break you want to insert. The following types of section breaks are available:
Next Page. This break starts the following section on the next page.
Continuous. This break creates a new section without affecting page breaks.
Odd Page. This break starts the following section on the next odd-numbered page.
Even Page. This break starts the following section on the next even-numbered page.
A section break is not displayed in Print Layout view unless non-printing characters are turned on, in which case it appears as a double horizontal line from the preceding paragraph mark to the margin. In Draft view, a section break appears as a double horizontal line across the page. In both cases, the words Section Break and the type of section break appear in the middle of the line.