- Law 12, Avoid Bad Paragraph Breaks.
When you're creating a document
that has a large amount of text,
that text will most likely be broken into paragraphs,
and these paragraphs are going to have to break
across pages in your document.
When paragraphs do break across pages,
it's important to make sure that they're breaking well,
that they're breaking at good places.
In other words, avoid bad paragraph breaks.
What exactly does that mean?
Here's an example of a bad paragraph break.
You can see that this line of text at the top of this page
is actually the last line of text
from the paragraph on the previous page.
When a paragraph contains multiple lines of text,
you don't want to leave one line
of text at the beginning of a page.
You don't want the paragraph to break that way.
You also don't want to leave one line of text
at the end of a page, and here's
an example of that type of bad break.
This line of text right here is actually the first line
of a paragraph that continues on the next page.
Now, keep in mind that we're talking
about paragraph breaks here, so we're talking
about paragraphs that contain more than one line of text.
If you have paragraphs in your document
that all fit on one line, then it's fine
for those lines of text to appear
at the beginning or the end of a page.
There's no paragraph break there.
In multi-line paragraphs, you want to keep
at least two lines of text grouped together at all times.
Keeping at least two lines of text together
forms a block or a group that carries
more visual weight than just one little line of text.
When you allow your paragraphs to break across pages
and leave these single lines of text
at the beginning or the end of a page,
you're not only creating visual unbalance,
but you're also breaking up the point of the paragraph
or the text in a paragraph in a way that makes it
a little bit harder to read and a little bit more difficult
for readers to stitch those thoughts
back together while they're reading.
This is another type of bad break.
You don't want to leave a heading or a subheading
by itself at the bottom of a page.
This heading goes with the paragraph that follows it, right?
We know that they should be grouped together,
but the paragraph starts on the next page for this heading,
so by allowing our paragraph to break here,
we've completely disrupted the flow of the document,
and we've made it just a little bit harder
for the reader to understand exactly what's going on.
Here, we fixed this break.
A subhead should always be followed
by at least two lines of text.
There are lots of different ways
that you can fix bad breaks, and there's really
not a one-size-fits-all solution.
The solution you choose and the way you fix your bad breaks
is really going to depend on the specific content
you're working with and your ability to change
either the page design or to edit the content.
If you can change the text or the content,
or maybe if you have a close working relationship
with the author or the editor,
editing the text is often the easiest way to fix bad breaks.
Sometimes just by adding, deleting,
or modifying a few words, you can make
enough of a difference to fix your bad break issue.
If editing the text isn't an option,
and sometimes it just won't be, you're going to need to make
some adjustments to the document design,
and these adjustments could include
maybe using your software settings
to change what are called the Keep Options.
Keep Options tell your software
how many lines of text must be kept together at all times.
You can also change the width of a text box,
and that's going to force the text to rewrap.
In other words, you're going to change the way
that the text is laid out on the page,
and that can fix your bad break issues.
You can also change the height of a text box.
You can make a text box just a little bit shorter
or even a little bit taller, and that's also going
to force your text to rewrap on the page,
and that can fix your bad breaks.
If you have a lot of headings or subheadings
in your document, just by tweaking
the amount of vertical spacing
that's surrounding these headings can be enough of a change.
You can either add a little bit of space
or maybe delete a little bit of space.
That can make enough of a difference
that you can fix your bad break issues that way often.
If you have any photographs or images or even a pull-quote,
maybe a chart or a graph that goes with your content,
just by adding an element like that to your page,
you're going to force the text to rewrap.
You're going to force your text to reflow in your document,
and that can be a way that you can fix your bad breaks.
Let's summarize.
Bad paragraph breaks disrupt the flow of your documents.
By avoiding bad paragraph breaks,
you're making your documents look more professional,
and you're making them more legible and more user-friendly.
That's Law 12, Avoid Bad Paragraph Breaks.