You may have used breaks in Word before, but are you aware of all the different kinds available and how each is used? This article summarises the two main types, page breaks and section Breaks. Page breaks are used to control text positioning between or within pages, and section breaks are used to apply different formatting or different header/footer combinations between sections. This article describes the different types of breaks and how they can be used.

Page breaks come in three varieties; page, column and text wrapping breaks.

Page breaks are perhaps the type we are most familiar with. When you fill up a page in Word, a page break is automatically added at the end of the first page, separating it from the next page.

The actual size of the page is determined by the settings in page setup. So an A4 page will be slightly longer than a page setup as letter size. You can also add a page break yourself. The way NOT to do this, is to press the enter key umpteen times until an automatic page break occurs. If you do this, and then add or delete some lines of text above the break, the position of the break will change.

The correct way is to press ctrl + enter keys. This will add a page break immediately after the cursor position. Then if you add or delete lines above the break (without filling up the page) the position of the page break will not change. You can turn on show/hide to see the hidden line marking where the break occurs.

Column breaks are used along with column formatting, so the text needs to be formatted in columns first. If you then select place the insert point, say, at the end of a line within the first column, the following text is forced to the next column. If you only have the regular one column page and you add a column break it just acts as a page break.

Text wrapping breaks will only work when you save your Word document as a web page so you will not see the effect in regular Word viewing. The text wrapping brake forces the text to drop above or below any images or tables next to the text.

Section Breaks come in four varieties; next page, continuous, even page and odd page.

'Next Page' section breaks act just like a page break, but the following page or pages are also marked as section2. If you place the insert point in the page following a section break you'll see the section number at the left of the grey status bar under the Word document.

You can apply page formatting differently in different sections, so section breaks are the ideal way, for example, to show the first page in section1 with the normal single column and the next page in section2 with three columns. Ensure the insert point is in the required section, and then choose your page formatting. For example if you create three sections each with one page, the first page could be portrait layout, the second landscape layout and the third back to portrait again.

Another example might be for a first page such as a report title in section1, aligned vertically centred so that whatever you type into the title page will always be perfectly centred, and the second and all the following pages aligned normally, vertically top.

You can also different headers and footers to different sections, and different page numbering in different sections. So for example if you write a long report you could have each part in a separate section, with each part numbered separately. If you do add headers and footers to a document with different sections just remember that headers and footers are by default linked between sections, so they act like one big section. If you do want different header and footer data including page numbers in different sections, you need to unlink the headers and footers first and then apply different headers/footers to each section.

Continuous section breaks apply a (hidden) section break at a point in a page. So a single page may contain more than one section. You can then format each section differently. So similar to the earlier example, the first section could have one column of text, the second section three columns of text and the third section back to one column of text, all in a single page. If you turn on show/hide you can see the hidden section break markers. Continuous section breaks are often used to create leaflets or flyers with different kinds of formatting within a single page.

Even page and odd page section breaks apply one or two page breaks, depending on the page number where the insert point is. For example if you apply an even page break at the end of page1, a single page break is added, as the next page is page2. If you apply an odd page break at the end of page1, two page breaks are added, so the next page is page 3. Note that the extra page is hidden and not accessible. However if you fill up the first page and then add more text page1 will page break into page2, which can then be used. Page3 is unaffected.

Deleting Breaks
If you turn on show/hide you can see the breaks showing as dotted lines. If you position the insert point just above or to the right of the lines and press the delete key, the break is deleted.

Interested in learning more about Word features such as breaks? A really useful way is to attend a training course and gain lots of Word skills in a relatively short time.