Before I learned about using page and section breaks in Microsoft Word, I would tap Enter continuously until my cursor had moved to the next page. While this might work in some circumstances, it can cause significant issues with your document’s layout down the line.
You’ll see in all my screenshots that I always display Word’s non-printing characters. I advise you to do the same, as they help you understand exactly how your work is formatted. To do this, click the Show/Hide icon (¶) in the Home tab on the ribbon, or press Ctrl+Shift+8.
Why You Shouldn’t Press Enter Repeatedly
In my Word document below, I’ve finished a chapter and want to start the next one on a new page.
One way I could make this happen would be by pressing Enter repeatedly until Microsoft Word starts a new page, then continuing my text from there.
However, doing this is a recipe for formatting disaster.
First, if I were to add or remove content later on, the manual gaps I created would change position in my document, creating random spaces where I don’t want them to be. In this example, after I added the red paragraphs on page 1, the start of the text on page 2 moved away from the top margin.
The same also happens when I make formatting alterations, like increasing or decreasing the font size. The screenshot below shows what happened when I reduced the font size by two points.
While this might be easy to rectify if your document only has a couple of pages, imagine how much extra work you’d have to do if you were working on a large file!
Why You Should Use Page and Section Breaks (And How to Add Them)
Microsoft Word’s page and section breaks are designed specifically for times when you need to create a deliberate partition in your work. The benefit of these breaks is that they remain intact, even if you make significant changes to your document.
In other words, using breaks fixes all the issues you’d face if you chose to spam Enter instead.
A page break is a soft break that, while moving the cursor to the next page, continues the formatting from the previous page. To add a page break where your cursor is placed, click Layout > Breaks > Page.
A section break, on the other hand, is a hard partition that divides the document into independent sections that can be formatted uniquely or have different page numbering systems. In fact, it’s impossible to format pages differently in Word without using a section break—another compelling reason to use section breaks instead of hammering Enter.
To start the next section on the following page, place your cursor at the end of the current section, and click Layout > Breaks > Next Page.
There are other types of section breaks you can also choose from in this menu, like a continuous section break that starts the next section immediately underneath the last line of text on the same page.
And there you have it: a Word document with structurally integral breaks that help you present your work exactly as you intend to!
Using breaks is just one of many ways you can improve the formatting of your Microsoft Word document. For example, you could use text styles, choose a suitable font, or add a watermark.
