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Avoid empty lines at the top of pages

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
April 15, 2022
3 replies
1234 views

I am looking for a function to avoir empty lines at the top of a new page - for long documents.

As a writer, I want sometimes no space between paragraphs. Sometimes I want one extra space. Sometimes two... I want to pause the reading, or signal some distancing between the two texts. A bit like in poetry. Probably this is also due to my rythmic habit from being a filmmaker. You want to insert silences. To force the reader to pause.

What I would like is being able - whatever the spacing I chose after a paragraph - to avoid empty lines at the top of next page. Turning the page is enough of a distance, enough of a pause.

Is there a function for this ? A way to adjust the workflow for this ?

Thanks for your help.

Correct answer Willi Adelberger

Several retruns in a row should always be avoided for several reasons:

As mentioned, you have additional work to remove or add them, if the text changes or the layout. On a later point in time, if you should add the empty lines again, you will not aware to do it.
If you export to several other file types. like EPUB flow, they are deleted any way.

Correct work is done with several paragraph styles with space before and after. If you you do that and additional fitting keep options in the paragraph styles will help you to reduce errative work.

S

ShaunBR

Participant

Everyone has correctly described existing functionality, but I'm with you, bernardnovet.

Choosing a distinct paragraph style every time I want extra space between paragraphs in the language text I'm currently writing, for example, would be far more onerous than scrolling through the entire document before publishing to remove the extra page-top empty line breaks.
I've learned to only make such manual adjustments once, at the very end, but it *would* be nice to get that functionality added so I don't have to!

Willi Adelberger

Community Expert

If you define next paragraph style it often reduces manual applying a correct style. Using empty paragraphs to create a distance is always a no go and causes typeset errors.

S

ShaunBR

Participant

Next paragraph style is indeed a great function, but in my case, there's no consistent logic to use such rules.
I create PDFs for the printer and empty paragraph create no problem at all, as long as I proof carefully, checking the first and last paragraph on each page, which isn't difficult, just a bit monotonous.

Willi Adelberger

Correct answer

Community Expert

Several retruns in a row should always be avoided for several reasons:

As mentioned, you have additional work to remove or add them, if the text changes or the layout. On a later point in time, if you should add the empty lines again, you will not aware to do it.
If you export to several other file types. like EPUB flow, they are deleted any way.

Correct work is done with several paragraph styles with space before and after. If you you do that and additional fitting keep options in the paragraph styles will help you to reduce errative work.

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

Don't use blank paragraph returns.

Setup up Paragraph Styles

And have a different paragraph style for each instance of larger spacing or smaller spacing.

https://helpx.adobe.com/ie/indesign/using/formatting-paragraphs.html

See this thread

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/how-do-i-adjust-spacing-between-paragraphs-in-indesign/m-p/7160822

You can remove all line breaks in your document via the GREP tools

There's a presaved GREP for Multipe Return to Single Return

Should catch 99.9% of them.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

In a more general rule, never use two whitespace characters in a row — line return, paragraph, tab, space. Especially when I am writing in Word or preparing a Word ms for import to ID, I do extensive stripping of extra whitespace. Saves SO many problems.

Watch especially for space-paragraph (and paragraph-space). Both will cause formatting glitches, especially with justified text.

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