Word For Mac Separator Line

If your documents contain footnotes or endnotes, you will have run into the concept of separators, which are the short (or long) lines Word inserts between your body text and the footnotes at the bottom of the page or the endnotes at the end of the document or section.

There are four kinds of separators:

Footnote Separator: By default, this is a line about two inches long.
Footnote Continuation Separator: By default, this is a line that stretches from margin to margin.
Endnote Separator: By default, this is identical to the Footnote Separator.
Endnote Continuation Separator: By default, this is identical to the Footnote Continuation Separator.

Splitting alignment on the same line in Word. Word will handle the alignment. #1 click on the Paragraph dialog launcher #2 click on the tabs button in bottom right of the paragraph dialog #3 the end result will be the right align tab shown at #3 #4 enter a value for the 'right align' tab, I used 6.94. When inserting footnotes or endnotes in Word document, you will find there is always a horizontal separator line above the footnote or endnotes texts. If you want to get rid of these separator lines, please try methods in this article. Remove footnote/endnote separator line in Word. Remove footnote/endnote separator line with VBA code.

If your footnotes are mostly quite short, and especially if they are few, you may never see the Footnote Continuation Separator. It is used when a footnote is too long to fit on the page and must be continued on the following page. This happens when the footnote reference in the text occurs so far down the page that there is room for part of the note but not all of it; instead of carrying the note reference and the entire note to the next page, Word fits as much as it can on the first page and flows to rest to the next page. The longer line signals readers that there is something different about these notes (if the note is split in the middle of a sentence, as required by the Chicago Manual of Style, this is an even more obvious clue).

Most users have no objection to the Footnote Separator, but they often find fault with the Footnote Continuation Separator. Sometimes they don’t want to see it at all, ever, and sometimes they want it to be the same as the initial Footnote Separator.

To avoid splitting a footnote (and thus avoid seeing the Footnote Continuation Separator), you can format the Footnote Text style as “Keep lines together.” If a given footnote contains more than one paragraph, you will need to format all but the last paragraph as “Keep with next.” Be aware that this will very likely result in a page that ends quite short; see “Improving the Bottom Line.”
To modify the Footnote Continuation Separator, see the next section.

What users usually object to most strenuously, however, is the Endnote Separator and Endnote Continuation Separator. Tips for dealing with these are also offeredbelow.

Customizing Footnote Separators

If you are following the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, which mandates a short separator line for continued footnotes and no separator for footnotes on the same page, you will need to modify Word’s built-in separators. Fortunately, this is not difficult, and it is done exactly the same way in all versions of Word, the only difference being how the footnote pane is accessed:

Word 2003 and earlier: Switch to Normal view and choose View | Footnotes.
Word 2007 and above: Switch to Draft view and choose References | Footnotes | Show Notes.

Note: You will not be able to view the footnote pane until you have inserted at least one footnote in the document.

The footnote pane, which will open below the document window, has a toolbar with a single dropdown list box. As shown in Figure 1, this list contains four items: All Footnotes (selected by default), Footnote Separator, Footnote Continuation Separator, and Footnote Continuation Notice. Select the item you want to customize.

Figure 1. The dropdown list box in the footnote pane

The separators are of a rather mysterious nature. They appear to be graphic objects of some kind, though with some font and paragraph characteristics, but they are not user-customizable. This means that you can’t actually “modify” them. You can only delete them and/or substitute something else for them. This means that, to meet the Chicago standards cited above, you can:

Change the Footnote Continuation Separator: Choose Footnote Separator in the dropdown. Select the separator and copy it. Then display the Footnote Continuation Separator, select it, and paste the Footnote Separator in its place.
Delete the Footnote Separator: Now return to the Footnote Separator, select it, and press Delete. It may be a good idea to stop there so as to leave some space between the body text and the footnotes, but if you want the separator to consume (virtually) no space at all, you can format both the font and the paragraph line spacing as 1 point.

The above are the two changes you are most likely to want to make, but there are other changes you can experiment with. For example:

Although you cannot resize the Footnote Separator, you can make it longer by duplicating it. Select and copy it, then paste the copy at the end of the original (and remove the extra empty paragraph this will create). I don’t know why you would want to do this, but you can.
By default the Footnote Continuation Separator is full margin width, but you can resize it by adding paragraph indents; right-click, choose Paragraph…, and increase the Left and Right indents as desired. (Thanks to user Doug Popovich for providing this suggestion.)
You can also change the color of the separator line: Select it, right-click and choose Font, and apply a different font color.
You can add more space above or below the separator. Click in it, right-click and choose Paragraph, and format the line spacing as desired.
If you want a fancier line, you can replace the built-in separator with clip art. You will find suitable clip art pictures by searching for “divider.” Delete the default separator and insert one of these pictures instead.
- In Word 2003 and earlier, use Insert | Picture | Clip Art and search for “divider.” Click on a divider to insert it.
- In Word 2007 and above, use Insert | Illustrations | Clip Art and search for “divider.” Click on a divider to insert it.

Note: In Word 2003 and earlier, you will see the clip art in the footnote pane. By default, it will be 6″ wide, but, unlike the default separator, it can be sized (horizontally and vertically) with the mouse. In Word 2007/2010, the clip art is not displayed in the footnote pane but can be seen and edited in Print Layout view.

Customizing Endnote Separators

There is much more often a need to customize endnote separators. As noted, by default these are identical to the footnote separators, a format that is much less suitable for endnotes, whether you put them at the end of a section (chapter) or at the end of the document. You may well want a solid line (like the Endnote Continuation Separator) between the end of a chapter and the endnotes and no line at all if the endnotes continue to the next page. In that case you can follow procedures like those described above for deleting or swapping separators.

The endnote separators are accessed exactly the same way as the footnote separators (see above); in the endnote pane (which will be displayed instead of the footnote pane), you will see an identical dropdown list box, except that it will list endnote options instead of those for footnotes.

To delete the Endnote Continuation Separator, just select it and press Delete.
To replace the Endnote Separator with the Endnote Continuation Separator, copy the Endnote Continuation Separator before deleting it, then paste over the Endnote Separator.
As noted above for the Footnote Continuation Separator, you can change the length using paragraph indents.

But don’t regard the separators as just a nuisance to be got rid of. Instead, think of how you can divert them to your own uses. Instead of a short line for the Endnote Separator, how about a heading that says “Notes”? And you can also have text reading, say, “Notes—continued” in place of the default Endnote Continuation Separator. To make these substitutions, just delete the existing separators and type in your desired text, applying any desired style.

Some caveats about using text separators:

Even if you apply a heading style to your “Notes” heading, it will not appear in the table of contents.
“Page break before” formatting of a separator is ignored, so you can’t use this to start endnotes on a new page.
Unless there is text before the endnotes on a page, the Endnote Separator will not be used; if a page break (automatic or manual) forces them to start on a new page, the Endnote Continuation Separator will be used.

You can get around (2) and (3) by adding an empty paragraph at the end of your document text, formatting it as “Page break before” and 1 point font size and paragraph spacing. This will force the endnotes to start on a new page and use the Endnote Separator, as shown in Figures 2 and 3.

Figure 2. Text Endnote Separator (in Heading 1 style) with empty paragraph above formatted as “Page break before” and 1 point (appearing as a grey line)

Figure 3. How the above looks in Print Preview

Figure 4. The Endnote Continuation Separator for the same document

Troubleshooting Note Separators

All of the note separators are in the Normal style, so any modifications you have applied to Normal style will also apply to the separators. The most common problems are indented separators (because a first-line indent has been added to Normal) or unwanted extra spacing (because Normal has been formatted as double-spaced, or Spacing Above/Below has been added). Sometimes, in the course of editing a separator, a user may have pressed Enter and added an empty paragraph below the separator.

The procedure for correcting a faulty separator is the same as for editing one. Open the appropriate notes pane, choose the appropriate separator in the dropdown list, and examine it for problems. Be sure thatnonprinting characters are displayed so that you can see any extra empty paragraphs that may have been added above or below the separator. Right-click and choose Paragraph and make sure that there are no indents and that line spacing is set to Single. If you have changed the font of Normal, you’ll also need to right-click and choose Font and reset the font to the Word factory default (which may be 10- or 12-point Times New Roman or 11-point Calibri).

Note: The separators don’t have to be in Normal style; you can apply any other style you prefer or create a custom one just for separators.

Modifying the Footnote Text style

Above I refer to formatting the Footnote Text style as “Keep lines together.” If you have never modified a style, see Word MVP Shauna Kelly’s article on “How to modify a style in Word.”

From there, in any version of Word, you will click on Format | Paragraph | Line and Page Breaks and check the box for “Keep lines together,” then OK twice to exit the dialogs. Use this same procedure to make any other desired changes to the style, such as changing the font or font size or adding a first-line indent or Spacing After.

Obviously, none of the above is difficult. What can be difficult is forcing Word to actually display the Footnote Text style so that you can select it.

This is not a problem in Word 2007 and above; there, if you click Options… and select “All styles” as the styles to show, Word does actually display all styles.
In Word 2000 and earlier, the Format | Style dialog can also be easily configured to display the complete list.
In Word 2002 and 2003, however, Show: All styles doesn’t really display all the styles, and Footnote Text is one of those that is missing (even if it is in use). Fortunately, Shauna Kelly also describes how to display or access the elusive styles.

With any luck, however, you won't have to do any of the above. With the insertion point in a footnote, right-click and choose Style from the context menu. This will open the Style dialog with the Footnote Text style selected. Click Modify... and make the desired changes to paragraph or font formatting. IfStyle does not appear on the context menu, then you'll have to use the methods above.

Version note: This article was originally written for Word 97 and 2000 and later updated for Word 2002 and 2003; while I have added some instructions for Word 2007 and above, much of the content is more applicable to Word 2003 and earlier.

In some cases, Word automatically converts text you type into fraction characters. Unless you have disabled the feature on the AutoFormat As You Type tab of AutoCorrect Options, whenever you type 1/4, 1/2, or 3/4, Word substitutes the ¼, ½, or ¾ font character. These three characters are found in virtually all fonts, so this feature works reliably. Users often ask whether it is possible to get Word to “create” other fractions in a similar format. Well, yes and no. This article discusses several approaches to creating fractions:

Font characters

There are several ways to create fractions in Word, but only one of them will produce fractions in the same style as ¼, ½, and ¾. Luckily, if what you need fractions for is recipes, this way will suffice. As you can see from the screen shot below, many fonts include the characters for ⅓, ⅔, ⅛, ⅜, ⅝, and ⅞. These, along with ¼, ½, and ¾, should be all you need for typing most recipes.

The Symbol dialog

As shown above, these characters appear in the Number Forms subset of Unicode fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial, Courier New, Calibri, and Cambria. You can insert them from the Symbol dialog in Word 97 and above. To open the Symbol dialog:

Word 2003 and earlier: Choose Symbol… from the Insert menu. Note that the most recently used symbols are available without scrolling.
Word 2007 and above: On the Insert tab of the Ribbon, in the Symbols group, click Symbol, then More Symbols… Recently used symbols are shown in the Insert | Symbols | Symbol palette as well as in the dialog.

In Word 2002 and above, you can also insert them using the shortcut keys shown (such as 2153, Alt+X for ⅓) or shortcut keys that you assign. In Word for Mac, you need a macro to insert Unicode characters. You can also assign keyboard shortcuts to them.

Note for Mac users: Don’t expect to see a display like the one above in Word for the Mac. Although many Mac fonts contain at least the ¼, ½, and ¾ fractions, the MacRoman Character Set does not contain them, so there are no built-in keystrokes for the characters, and the Symbol dialog in Word won’t show them to you because it is capable of showing only the characters present in the MacRoman character set. You have to look such characters up in the Character Palette (available only if you have OS X). You have to display the Unicode keyboard (and get it to work…), then enter the character in hexadecimal. The fraction fonts mentioned below may be the only way you can access fraction glyphs; if you can’t justify purchase of special fonts, you will need to rely on one of the alternative methods described below.

If you want these fractions to behave the way ¼, ½, and ¾ do, however, you will need to create AutoCorrect entries from them (see “Exploiting AutoCorrect” for instructions on creating AutoCorrect entries). The easiest way to do this, of course, is to create AutoCorrect entries to replace 1/3, 2/3, etc., with the equivalent font characters. That is what most users will do. But users sometimes type dates in M/d or d/M format and don’t want the date for January 2 (or February 1) turned into ½. They therefore disable the AutoFormat As You Type feature to “Replace fractions (1/2) with fraction character (½).” If you are one of those users, then choose different trigger text for your AutoCorrect entries. You could, for example, use 1;3 instead of 1/3. Once you have set up AutoCorrect entries for all six of these extra fractions, you’ll be all set to type recipes.

In addition to the fraction glyphs available in most Unicode fonts, you can purchase fonts that contain only fractions. For example, Adobe sells PostScript fraction fonts to match its New Century Schoolbook and Helvetica fonts. To use these, however, you would have to change fonts and insert the fraction characters using the Symbol dialog or a keyboard chart.

EQ fields

The most universally useful way to create ad hoc fractions is with the EQ (Equation) field using the f switch. This creates a fraction with a horizontal line between the numerator and the denominator. Here’s how to do it:

Place the insertion point where you want the fraction to appear.
Press Ctrl+F9 to insert field braces.
Between the field braces, type the following:

EQ F(a,b)

where a and b are the numerator and denominator of the fraction. For example, if you want to create the fraction 1/16, the field would look like this:

{ EQ F(1,16) }

With the insertion point in the field, press Shift+F9. This gives the following result:

For consistency, it is best not to mix fractions created this way with built-in font characters that use diagonal separators. In a document with varied fractions, use EQ fields even for ¼, ½, and so on so that all the fractions will be uniform.

Note that you are not limited to numbers in EQ fields. If you want to create fractions using words, you can do that, too. Suppose you wanted to represent a financial ratio such as the “acid test” (“quick ratio”):

To achieve this, you would create this field:

{ EQ f (Current assets – Inventory,Current liabilities) }

By default, the EQ f field centers text above and below the division line, and the alignment switches available to some other EQ fields do not work for fractions. Text can be aligned manually, however, by adding spaces to the numerator or denominator as required.

Formatted font characters

For very large or unusual fractions, such as 1/10,000 or 23/250, an EQ field or Equation Editor object, which uses a horizontal separator, is appropriate and satisfactory. But for most common fractions, such as 1/6 or 1/9, users usually want what is called a “shilling” fraction, that is, one with a slanted separator, like the built-in ¼, ½, and ¾ font characters. There is no built-in way to create these, but you can simulate them with a little work. Here’s how:

Type a fraction such as 1/6; instead of the / (forward slash, solidus, virgule) character from your keyboard, you’ll probably want to use the fraction slash or “division slash.” You can find this in the Mathematical Operators subset (glyph 2215) in Unicode fonts or as character 164 in the Symbol font. It is longer and more nearly horizontal and therefore works better for this type of fraction.
Select the numerator and format it as Superscript (Ctrl+Shift+= or check the box for Superscript in the Font dialog).
Select the denominator and format it as Subscript (Ctrl+= or check the box for Subscript in the Font dialog).

Fractions created in this way may need some tweaking to look their best (experiment with the Spacing and Position settings on the Character Spacing tab of the Font dialog). If you’ll be using specific ones frequently, you’ll want to save them as AutoCorrect entries. Also, it is best not to call attention to their failings by mixing them with the built-in font characters. If you will be using this method to create fractions for 1/6 and 1/9, say, do it for 1/4, 1/8, and so on as well so that all the fractions in your document will be uniform.

Using a macro

Former Word MVP Steve Hudson has written a macro that formats characters automatically. It is suitable for use after the text has been created, to automatically format all of the fractions found in document. You can get ithere (scroll down the page to find it).

Macros have also been provided byGraham Mayor andGreg Maxey. If you don’t know what to do with these macros, see Graham’s “Idiots’ Guide to Installing Macros.”

Equation editors

Word For Mac Separator Lines

All of the methods above are aimed at creating fairly simple fractions, with a single numerator and denominator. At the other end of the spectrum, if you need to create complex mathematical formulas such as the one below, you need heavy-duty tools.

Word 2003 and earlier

Once Word’s Equation Editor is installed (see note below), you can use Insert | Object | Microsoft Equation 3.0 to insert an equation object. If you’ll be doing a lot of this, you’ll want to add an Equation Editor toolbar button. OpenTools | Customize and select the Commands tab. In the Insert category, scroll the Commands list till you find Equation Editor. Select the command with your mouse and drag it to a toolbar (or the Insert menu). (For more detailed information on adding buttons to a toolbar or menu, see “Customizing Toolbars” or “Customizing Menus.”

When you start the Equation Editor, its toolbar will be displayed:

The Equation toolbar

You can select the fraction type you need from the “Fraction and radical templates” palette and then insert numbers in the spaces provided. You can also, using the other tools on the toolbar, create complex formulas such as the one in the example above. The Equation Editor applet has its own Help file, and you can also findhelpful tips at the website of Design Science, which supplies the application to Microsoft.

Text Separators In Word

Note: Equation Editor (Microsoft Equation 3.0) is supplied with all versions of Word but is not installed by default (in the Typical install), so you may need to rerun Setup to install it. To do this, go to Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs, select Microsoft Office, and click the Change button. In the first page, select “Add or Remove Features.” On the next page, expand “Office Tools.” Select Equation Editor and set it to “Run from My Computer.” Click the Update button, and insert the Office CD when prompted. On the Mac, look on your Office CD for the application.

Word 2007 and above

Recent versions of Word have a built-in Equation Editor created by Microsoft. On the Insert tab of the Ribbon, in the Symbols group, click Equation. There is a gallery of sample equations, but you can start from scratch with Insert New Equation. This will cause the contextual Equation Tools | Design tab to be displayed. The Ribbon has a palette of symbols, plus templates for various constructs, including fractions. There are also Math AutoCorrect shortcuts that can be used to create equations from the keyboard. For more information on the use of the new equation editor, seethis article.

Helpful Hint: You don't have to go through Insert | Symbols | Equation | Insert New Equation to insert a new blank equation; there is a keyboard shortcut for this: Alt+= (that is, the Alt and = [equals] keys pressed simultaneously).

Note: If you prefer to continue to use Microsoft Equation 3.0, it is still available in Word 2007 and above, although it is “not supported” in Word 2013 and 2016 (it may still be satisfactory for simple fractions but should not be relied on for complex equations). On the Insert tab of the Ribbon, in the Text group, click Object and select Object from the menu. In the list on the Create New tab, select Microsoft Equation 3.0.

MathType

If you need more features than either of Word’s equation editors offers, you can also download atrial version of Design Science’s MathType, of which Microsoft Equation 3.0 is a cut-down version. If you decide not to purchase MathType at the end of the trial period, it will degrade into MathType Lite, a souped-up version of Microsoft Equation 3.0; you’ll still be able to edit the equations you created with MathType, and you’ll continue to have access to the full set of MathType fonts and symbols.

Fractions in running text

Whenever you insert a fraction that is not a font character, whether you use an EQ field or a combination of superscript and subscript formatting, it is likely that your line spacing will be expanded to compensate for the extra height. If you do not want this to happen, you have two options:

You can set the line spacing to an exact amount (Exactly under Line Spacing in the Paragraph dialog).
You can enable the Compatibility Option for “Don’t add extra space for raised/lowered characters.” This setting will affect only cases where you have raised or lowered your superscript/subscript characters.
- Word 2003 and earlier: This setting is on the Compatibility tab of Tools | Options.
- Word 2007: Click Office Button, then Word Options. Select the Advanced tab. The Layout Options are at the bottom.
- Word 2010: On the File menu, click Options. Select the Advanced tab. The Layout Options are at the bottom.
- Word 2013 and above: This option is not available.

For most Equation Editor objects and for text “fractions” such as the Acid Test example above, it is preferable to “display” the text by putting it in a separate, centered paragraph (as has been done in this article).

Challenges for displayed equations

“Displaying” equations is a challenge when using the Microsoft equation editor in Word 2007 and above: If the paragraph that contains the (new) equation editor object also contains one or more characters of regular text, Word automatically changes the equation from “display” to “inline.” That reduces the font size of fractions and forces the limits of integrals and sums to the right of the symbol instead of above and below.

Word Separator Line Vertical

Even if you don't have any regular text in the equation itself, you may need an equation number at the right margin. There are two suggested solutions for this problem:

Line Separator Word

Put the equation and equation number in separate cells of a single-row table with two or three columns. This approach also solves problems with cross-references, which will repeat the entire equation if the equation and number are in the same paragraph.
There is actually a built-in feature allowing you to preface the equation number with # (as described here). This automatically puts the equation number at the right margin. But this generates its own problems, as described by my fellow Word MVP Jay Freedman:

There is a significant problem in Word’s implementation of this feature: It’s difficult to use such an equation number in a reference. The cross-reference dialog doesn’t see it at all, insisting that the equation must be captioned in order to refer to it. A clumsy workaround is to add a bookmark manually around the equation number in the EE box, and make the cross-reference point to the bookmark. Unfortunately, if the equation number includes the last character in the EE box, then the cross-reference will include the internal code for an EE object, so it will show its own EE box. That could be avoided by adding a space following the equation number and not including that space in the bookmark—just something else to forget to do. If I were writing a long math paper or dissertation, I’d be disgusted at the choice between this and an AutoText of a table.

Line Separator Text

By “AutoText of a table,” Jay is referring to the first solution mentioned. You can create a single-row table with a dummy equation and equation number and save it as an AutoText entry for ease of insertion.

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