Style shading and column breaks, newspaper columns

[mabing]

I have a two column document with newspaper style
columns. At the top of each column I want to use a
style I've defined which includes shading of the
paragraph (all pagination related options are unchecked)-
it's only ever used on single lines of text for accent.

The text does NOT go all the way to the bottom of the
page in the first column but I want to move to the next
column so I insert a 'column break'.

PROBLEMS:
1)The accent styles never have the same height on the
page; the first instance in the first column appears to
respect the Format>Paragraph>Spacing>Before: value of
6pt. The same style at the top of the second column
NEVER respects the same value so despite both being the
same style and at the same place in two columns they are
lobsided.
2)Inserting a column break also inserts another empty
line at the bottom of the first column; normally this
wouldn't be a problem, but with the shading of the style,
the shading 'backflows' to the (now last) line in the
first column!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You can solve the first problem (in recent Word versions) by checking the
box for "Suppress Space Before after a hard page or column break" on the
Compatibility tab of Tools | Options. This will not, however, help with the
second problem (for page breaks, this can be solved by using "Page break
before" instead of a manual page break). For this you'll need to delete the
column break and apply "Keep with next" formatting (and possibly "Keep lines
together" as well) to the paragraph(s) you want to move to the next column.