Have you read the links you have been provided? Especially the one about the bottom line?



This forum is about helping you learn to fix your problems or prevent them, not simply a free editing service.

Many thanks for your kind help, and yes I read two of the four links you have provided. I didn't get to go through the bottom line one yet, although I surely will.


If you could just have a look at the file I've attached and point me in the right direction as macropod did yesterday, I'll be deeply grateful. I do want to educate myself and will do so. At the same time I have a publishing deadline which is just about on my head now and so many other things to take care of for it as well. If you could kindly point out what I have to do here, I would be so grateful.

Looking at Page 3 and 4, I see no difference.




Looking at Pages 1 and 2, I see a difference.




The causes and remedies for this are described in Improving the Bottom Line by Suzanne Barnhill, MVP which is about what makes the bottoms of different pages have different levels. That article concludes:



"The bottom line, therefore, is that there is no way to achieve uniform page length without considerable work on your part, “saving” or “making” lines as needed. In many cases, the sensible approach is to live with uneven pages. You can make this appear more intentional by starting major divisions (Heading 1, say) on a new page. If the problem is mostly caused by footnotes, you can use endnotes instead. You can certainly abandon widow/orphan control: it’s very common nowadays to see single lines at the ends and beginnings of pages. Whatever approach you take, however, it is bound to involve some compromises."

Those results are a product of the differences in line spacing (which varies between multiples of 1.15 and 1.25) in your document. I note, too, that you're using empty paragraphs to generate the inter-paragraph spacing instead of using paragraph before/after spacing. Hence, the inter-paragraph spacing also varies, according to whether the empty paragraph has a line spacing of 1.15 or 1.25. To fix that problem you'll need to adjust the line spacings so that, regardless of the font used, it is always the same. Even so, you're liable to end up with a different space if a paragraph ends at a page boundary - which, with your present approach, might even result in an empty paragraph at the top of a page.

One might also query why some footnote references are bolded but other are not...

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

@Paul: It is true the I use different line spacing for the English sentences and Hindi sentences. The English font looks proper at the default 1.15, whereas at 1.15 the Hindi font is totally crowded, with words sitting on top of each other; hence, the need for 1.25 for Hindi.

But I don't see how that would explain the noted difference in distance between the bottom of the page number and the bottom of the lowermost footnote. Whether the footnotes are in Hindi or English, the vast majority have this distance at 7 mm. Whereas occasionally -- and it may be with an English or a Hindi footnote -- the distance is around 11 mm.

I appreciate your pointing out about the inter-paragraph spacing; I will look into how to use paragraph before/after spacing.

Well, on page #1 of your attachment, there is an empty paragraph at the bottom of the page (with a 1.15 line spacing), whereas on page 3 the paragraph (with a 1.25 line spacing) continues to the next page, as does the page 4 paragraph (with a 1.15 line spacing). All these lead to different gaps between the text and footnote. There isn't a lot you can do about that when the gap is caused by an empty paragraph or paragraph before/after spacing; the others are caused by the varied line spacing.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Sure, but I don't see why that would have any impact on the distance between the page number and the footnote. I am asking exclusively about items within the footer: The page number, and the footnote. What spacing is happening up in the main text above the footer, does that impact the distance between the page number and the footnote?

On my system, the space between the footnotes and the footer content on pages 1 & 3 is exactly the same (0.86cm - I used an autoshape line as a measuring stick); the only differences are between the body content and the footnotes. If you have any footnotes with empty paragraphs following their text, that would affect the visible spacing.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Hmm. Odd that there is a visible, measurable difference on my system and not on yours. But before creating this document to show to you I confirmed that there were no empty paragraphs in following the footnote. There is of course a paragraph sign at the end of every footnote--but that there following each and every footnote in the entire file. I assumed it was standard protocol.

Not only is there a paragraph break at the end of a footnote, but you'll find that paragraph break is undeletable.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]