One of my jobs as a copy-editor was to deal with any oddities in a Word document that might cause problems for the typesetter. Once upon a time, this effectively meant stripping out virtually all the formatting and replacing it with textual codes (e.g. <H1> to indicate a top-level subheading). Latterly, typesetting programs became much better at coping with Word styles, so this aspect of my job was more a matter of making sure that the author had applied styles consistently throughout the document.
But there are still occasions when one comes across something that needs to be stripped out. One of those annoyances would be the automatic graphic lines that Word is so good at creating (just type three dashes and press Enter) in even the oddest places (I have occasionally come across them in the middle of a set of footnotes!). The first time I encountered one of these, which an author had inadvertently created between a couple of paragraphs, I spent hours trying to delete the thing.
Once you know what to do, it only takes moments to get rid of the offending line:
- Place the cursor in the paragraph above the unwanted line.
- Go to the Home tab.
- In the Paragraph section, click the arrow to the right of the Borders button. This will bring up a drop-down menu of options.
- Choose the No border option from the menu. And the line will disappear.
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