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Michelle Anderson wondered (on behalf of an anonymous poster): <<I'm
wondering if anyone has heard about using the "shift + enter" option
to reduce the number of paragraph marks appearing in a document. I
can find all kinds of information telling me that I shouldn't have
paragraph marks with no attached text, but nothing that tells me what
happens if I do have them.>>
Shift + Enter is not the solution any more than Enter is. The reason
you shouldn't insert empty paragraph markers is twofold: it's easier
and more efficient to adjust paragraph spacing using the paragraph
style's settings (space after or space before), and a paragraph
should serve a functional role defined based on its content, not
simply a spacing role.
The layout-related problem with using extra carriage returns to
create spacing is that the software then treats this the same way it
treats any paragraph, and reserves a line of blank space whether you
want one or not; if that line falls at the start or end of the page,
as often happens after several rounds of revision, you end up with
unwanted empty space that must be removed manually after each round
of revision. In contrast, defining this blank space in the paragraph
style lets the software automatically decide whether it's necessary
to display the space or (at the bottom of a page, for instance)
whether it can not display it.
The "function not format" role is unimportant in everyday typing, but
it becomes significant when you're using structured content in which
the content and the format are stored separately (e.g., XML, CSS). If
you litter a document with empty paragraphs, what functional role do
they serve? None that can't be better served by the formatting
instructions. And because they're present in the document, they get
the same formatting treatment as the paragraphs that actually contain
useful information.
<<I know that corruption is often stored in paragraph marks, but
everything I find talks about that occuring in the final paragraph
mark of a document.>>
Strictly speaking, it's formatting information (not corruption) that
is stored in the paragraph marks, and I've never heard that this
causes any significant problems in any software other than Word. And
yes, it's the final paragaph marker in a Word document that is most
likely to become corrupted, for a range of possible reasons -- but
mostly because the programmers who developed the .doc format should
have been slapped hard and told to come up with something less
elegant and more effective. Nothing much we can do about the current
lousy format other than to learn about the common problems that arise
and what workarounds to use when corruption does occur.
----------------------------------------------------
-- Geoff Hart
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
www.geoff-hart.com
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