Inconsistent paragraph style

[electricaltill]

Hi all,

I have a paragraph style that doesn't seem to be consistently being applied - the margin above it changes in different sections.

By that, I mean that the margin (in terms of paragraph settings) is consistent, but the text is positioned differently.

Here is what I have tried:
-checked paragraph style margins
-checked page setup margins


-checked header/footer spacing above and below
-tried clearing the formatting of the affected paragraphs and reapplying the desired style.

All settings are consistent, yet on certain pages the text is positioned differently, and I have to make changes to the margins of individual paragraphs for consistent positioning.

If it makes any difference, all of the affected paragraphs are headings which appear at the top of their respective pages, and it is only their margin above which is being affected (i.e. Some appear further down the page than others).

What could be affecting the positioning of the paragraph? There are no images around except a small one that appears in every header.

[Charles Kenyon]

You should NOT be using margin settings for individual paragraphs. Doing this inserts two section breaks and makes editing much harder. Instead for left and right, use paragraph indents, for top and bottom, use space before and space after. These can all be found in the paragraph formatting dialog.

Different versions of Word treat space before and after differently. I believe Word 2013 uses the larger of the two between paragraphs and by default does not use space before at the top of a page.

[electricaltill]

Originally Posted by Charles Kenyon

You should NOT be using margin settings for individual paragraphs. Doing this inserts two section breaks and makes editing much harder. Instead for left and right, use paragraph indents, for top and bottom, use space before and space after. These can all be found in the paragraph formatting dialog.

Sorry, I'm using bad terminology. I am indeed using spacing before and after for the paragraphs. It is that which I am having to edit for some of the paragraphs to position correctly. The margins are identical on every page.

[Charles Kenyon]

Space after formatting in your header style can enter into spacing.

If you want to send me the document I'll take a look. You can replace any confidential text before sending so long as it shows the problem.
wordfaq at addbalance.com

[electricaltill]

Originally Posted by Charles Kenyon

Space after formatting in your header style can enter into spacing.

If you want to send me the document I'll take a look. You can replace any confidential text before sending so long as it shows the problem.
wordfaq at addbalance.com

Thanks very much for offering. I'd love to, but the problem infuriatingly disappeared when I removed the content to send you a sample.

I have checked the headers on two pages that have the problem, and the header text is the same paragraph style, with the same spacing before and after. In addition, the 'header from top' settings are the same for both headers. Anything else it could be?

Edit: from the position of the horizontal dashed line when I'm in H&F mode, the spacing below the header is uniform - but the text outside the header has inconsistent spacing above it.

Edit edit: I deleted the text immediately following the header, in case there was a problem with that paragraph style, but the text that followed it (a different paragraph style) was also inconsistently spaced below the header, in what looks like the same manner.

[Charles Kenyon]

Do you have different first page setting in your headers?

You can create content by typing the next line in Word, pressing Enter, and then applying styles.

=lorem(40,50)

See Random Text Generator for more about this.

[Charles Kenyon]

Space before formatting will act differently on the first page than it will on continuation pages by default.

Here are screen shots from a document with the same formatting on all paragraphs. I think it is 12 points before. I did this in a two-column format to make it clearer. On page 1, this is applied to the first paragraph. On page 3 the space before is not applied.

Is this what you are seeing?

[Charles Kenyon]

See this thread.
Two suggestions are to make a Frame a part of the Style definition and to lower the text using Advanced formatting (also as a part of the Style definition).
Frames and Textboxes in Microsoft Word

These shouldn't be necessary, but they are good workarounds.

[electricaltill]

Originally Posted by Charles Kenyon

Space before formatting will act differently on the first page than it will on continuation pages by default.

By 'first page' do you mean the first page of a section? That is happening, but it is also not happening on other pages that are the first page of a section.

[Charles Kenyon]

Originally Posted by electricaltill

By 'first page' do you mean the first page of a section? That is happening, but it is also not happening on other pages that are the first page of a section.

At this point I know that there are two work-arounds.
See this thread.
Two suggestions are to make a Frame a part of the Style definition and to lower the text using Advanced formatting (also as a part of the Style definition).
Frames and Textboxes in Microsoft Word

These shouldn't be necessary, but they are good workarounds.

[electricaltill]

The frames solution worked, thanks for that.