Bottom Margin of Paper is Larger than 1 Inch

APA 7 requires that the margins in a paper are one inch all the way around. However, when working on a paper in Microsoft Word, you may experience instances when the bottom margin appears to be more than one inch. There is a very good reason for this called "Widow/Orphan Control."

Widow/Orphan Control is a setting in Word that prevents a single line of a paragraph from being left alone at the top (known as a "widow") or bottom (known as an "orphan") of a page. By default, Word is set to automatically adjust documents to prevent widows and orphans, resulting in bottom margins that appear to be more than one inch.

This type of paragraph handling is very common in professional papers, so it is recommended that you leave this setting as is.

However, if you do wish to disable this option, please follow the steps below.

Disable Widow/Orphan Control

1. Highlight the paragraphs in which you want to control widow and orphan
2. Right-click the highlighted text
3. Click Paragraph
4. Click the Line and Page Breaks tab
5. Un-check the Widow/Orphan control check box
6. Click OK

Once you have followed these steps, the page will no longer have a bottom margin larger than one inch.