Word 2003 cursor positions after paragraph mark

[PaulNeubauer]

Hi folks,

This is going to be a strange-sounding question. I've never seen it before and have used Word for many years (since changing over from WordStar in the early 1990s) and through many versions (2.0 anyone?).

Following the suggestions of folks like Woody Leonhart, I have long been in the habit of showing paragraph marks. Too much of Word's behavior is incomprehensible without them.

Always in the past, I've found that if I click my mouse pointer to the right of a line of text at the end of a paragraph, the cursor positions itself just before the paragraph mark and if I then hit Enter, because I'm "inside" a styled region, it behaves as it should.

Recently I had to wipe out a computer and reinstall XP, Office 2003 and everything else. It's been the usual pain, but the weirdest thing is that now, if I click to the right of the last line of a section (just before a section break), the cursor positions itself to the right of the paragraph mark and Enter gives a new "normal" paragraph without the style of the previous paragraph. I've never noticed that behavior before. (The cursor positions itself to the left of the paragraph mark if I'm not at the last line of a section.)

Have I just been oblivious all these years? Has anyone else noticed a similar behavior?

Thanks,
Paul

 

[TonyJollans]

I think it's always been so. There isn't really any space between the end of text within a section (whether or not there's a paragraph mark there) and the section break itself.

Exactly what happens will depend a little on the View you are in and exactly where you click but, essentially, you are positioned before the section break (so you can add text to the section, or select the section break itself) in the same way as, without the section break, you are positioned before the paragraph break.

You don't necessarily get the normal style, although you can get some undesired effects; you get the style of the section break itself. That, however, may well be Normal, possibly inherited from the end-of-document mark when it was inserted - off the top of my head I'm not sure of the rules.


Enjoy,
Tony

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[fumei]

The rule is:

The first paragraph of any new Section is the Style of the paragraph where the Section is inserted.

Say you have a Style named "Yadda", and you make a new document - with the single paragraph mark - Yadda.

There is only one paragraph, and its style is Yadda.

Insert a new Section.

The first paragraph of the new Section is Yadda.

Note that the first Section (which at this point has NO text) is also Yadda.

If you type in text, notice that there is NO paragraph mark. The text being entered into Section 1 is actually terminated by the paragraph mark in Section 2. Hitting the Enter key will.....add a parahraph mark.

Note that if you Backspace (after hitting Enter) the paragraph mark will, in fact, be removed.

If the Style you have is Normal, then it is very likely that Tony is correct (of course) and it is from the end-of-document paragraph mark.

However, as you can see for yourself, if you change the end-of-paragraph mark to a different style, then a Section break will take that Style.

It really is one rule: The first paragraph of any new Section is the Style of the paragraph where the Section is inserted.

faq219-2884

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture

 

[PaulNeubauer]

Thanks, Tony and fumei. It still seems a little weird, but at least I know I'm not going crazy. (At least no crazier than usual. ;-) )

Paul

 

[fumei]

No crazier than Word itself. It has its own way of "thinking" about what a document is. The Object Model follows from how Microsoft considers a document, that is, the Document Model.

faq219-2884

Gerry
My paintings and sculpture