Large amounts of white space

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mdparker04
New to all this
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:28 pm

Large amounts of white space

Post by mdparker04 »

Hi All,

I am a new user of Mellel and love the simplicity of configuration and use; however, I have a couple of issues I hope someone knows how to resolve.

I am trying to set up a new template for the SBL (Society of Biblical Languages) format. I took the modern U.S. format template, and based on what I think I understand, I began modifying the headings and a few other minor settings to make it appropriate for SBL.

SBL requires the following:
Body: double-spaced, Times New Roman, point 12
Top-level heading-1, centered, bold, Time New Roman, 12 pt
2nd level-heading-2, centered, regular, Times New Roman, 12 pt

Both heading styles require 2 blank lines above the heading and 1 below, so I changed paragraph spacing above 24 pt and below:12 pt.

The only thing else I changed was adding a new style for the title page only, which makes all letters: uppercase.

Now, for the problem - sometimes, I’d only write 3 or 4 lines on a page and then press return to start a new paragraph. Instead of the lines continuing on the page, it creates the following paragraph on the next page. Consequently, I have a large amount of white space. If I enter an additional return below the 3 or 4 lines, I have noticed that it’ll suddenly bring all the text up from the other page. The problem is that although the lines came up, I now have an additional return between a paragraph I don’t need. If I delete the extra return, all of the lines below it drop to the next page again.

Has anyone seen this odd behavior and know how to resolve the problem? I’ve got one other issue to resolve, but I will stick to one problem at a time. If there is a way to share files on the forum, I can upload mine so you can see the issue.

Thank you for the help!
Michael
Amontillado
Knows everything, can prove it
Posts: 148
Joined: Fri May 04, 2018 4:00 am

Re: Large amounts of white space

Post by Amontillado »

I wonder if this could be from the "keep" options in the paragraph style.

What do you have for lines at start, lines at end, and keep with next?
mdparker04
New to all this
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:28 pm

Re: Large amounts of white space

Post by mdparker04 »

Thanks for the reply. I also thought of those suggestions to no avail.

However, I just started a new paper today, and thus far, I have written about 6 or 7 pages into it with no problems!

The only thing I can figure out is I had an MS Word doc that I used as a basic template to help with my formatting. I imported it into Mellel, and everything looked okay with it, but there had to be some hidden incompatibility causing the weird behavior.

With this new paper, I re-made my template from start to finish in Mellel, and as I said, there have been no issues on this paper thus far.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Michael
Eyal Redler
Co-founder
Posts: 692
Joined: Thu Oct 27, 2005 9:15 am

Re: Large amounts of white space

Post by Eyal Redler »

I'm pretty sure this is an issue of either "Keep with next" or "keep lines together", Michael contacted us via support and sent the document so I was able to confirm. Here's the standard explanation for this (I'll add this to the FAQ soon):

It looks like the issue here is related to a bad configuration of "Keep lines together" and/or "Keep with next" settings in the paragraph style. There can be two issues here which can combine. First is that you have bad settings for the "Keep options" in your paragraph style, second can be that you have the wrong paragraph style applied on parts of the text (for example, having a title paragraph style applied to body text)
Check the paragraph style you're using for the body text of your document and see if it has these settings turned on. Do this:
1. Click somewhere in the body text
2. At the toolbar, look for the style well and click the "Paragraph:" item (this opens the current paragraph style for editing, you can do the same using Styles->Paragraph->Edit <style name> or via the paragraph palette/styles tab)
3. Look in "Keep options" and make sure the settings there make sense (see below as to what "makes sense" can mean)
4. Do the same for the paragraph style used in your titles.

What settings should you use? Here are some basic rules:
For paragraph styles used for body text:
"Keep lines together" - should usually be turned on but the "Options" popup menu below it should be "at start/end" with some reasonable values of 1 or 2 at start and end - this is a setting to avoid "orphans and widows" - lonely lines at the top or bottom of pages.
"Keep with next" - should be zero
For paragraph styles used in titles :
"Keep lines together" should normally be on with "Options" set to "All lines" - this avoids breaking a multi-line title across pages
"Keep with next" should be non-zero - this allows you to avoid a lonely title at the bottom of a page.
Once you know your styles are setup correctly you should check your text and make sure that you have the body paragraph style/s applied on body text and the title paragraph style/s applied on the titles. If you're using auto-titles, you should check your auto-title setup to make sure it uses the right styles.
Eyal Redler
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mdparker04
New to all this
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2020 4:28 pm

Re: Large amounts of white space

Post by mdparker04 »

Thank you again, Eyal.

I wanted to confirm that you were spot on in your answer! I made the setting changes you suggested, and I thought by looking at the paper, the body text had the correct style applied. However, I mass-selected paragraphs and applied the correct type, and suddenly everything thing looks fine. It’s amazing what a few wrong settings will do. I feel much better about bringing text over from Word docs now—definitely a time saver. I really love the ease of setting up my paper, building my TOC, etc. now that I know (sort of) what I’m doing.

Michael
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