Thank you for your reply. I am using MS Word 2008 for Mac. However, once you made me aware of the template problem, I resolved my issue by quitting Word, going to my user account and following the path ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/Normal.dotm. I renamed Normal.dotm to JunkNorm.dotm, then reopened Word. Voila! A new, correctly oriented blank Normal document opened. I am very grateful for your help.