Yes. There's an option. Turn off display of non-printing formatting marks.

Page break before formatting does not involve the insertion of anything. Inserting a next-page section break or a manual page break does involve inserting a code in the document. Display of non-printing formatting marks shows those.

Charles - I'm not talking about the formatting marks. In the normal printing view, there is empty space added before a manual page break. It looks like a big tab. If you type after the space the text appears on the next page. If the space is deleted, the break is deleted too. It's obviously a placeholder for the page break, but I find it annoying when editing documents. Word did not handle breaks like this prior to 2007.

I found the solution now. For anyone searching, try:

File > Options > Advanced > (scroll down) Layout Options > Split apart page break and paragraph mark

Now you can add a manual page break or blank page without Word creating empty space. You can type and delete on the preceding page without affecting the break and text will stay on that page. If you click at the top of the next page and backspace, the page break will be deleted, as it should be.