Columns split the text area into side-by-side strips, as in a newsletter. A section break lets one part of a page have different settings from another, such as a full-width title above two columns. Briefs ask for this whenever a document must look like a leaflet or a newsletter.
How do columns work?
You choose the number of columns and the gap (the space between them). The column width follows from the text area you set in the page layout lesson:
Column width = (text width − gaps) ÷ number of columns.
The number of gaps is one fewer than the number of columns. Two columns have one gap, three columns have two.
When do you need a section break?
Use a continuous section break when part of the page needs a different column setting. Without it, the column setting applies to the whole document, and the title gets squeezed.
Use a column break to push text to the start of the next column on purpose. Never press Enter many times to move text across, because it moves again whenever the text changes.
Worked example
Brief: an invented “Taman Harapan Reading Club” newsletter, A4 portrait, side margins 20 mm, title across the full width, body text in two columns with a 10 mm gap.
Step 1. Text width = 210 − 20 − 20 = 170 mm.
Step 2. Column width = (170 − 10) ÷ 2 = 80 mm.
Step 3. Type the title and apply one column. Insert a continuous section break below it.
Step 4. In the second section, choose two columns and set the gap to 10 mm.
Step 5. Type the body text. Check that it flows down the left column, then the right.
A common mistake
A student selects the entire document and applies two columns before the title is separated.
Wrong result: the title sits inside the left column only, about 80 mm wide, and wraps over three lines.
The correction is to put the title in its own section with one column, then apply two columns only to the body section.
Check yourself
1. The text width is 170 mm and the brief asks for three columns with 6 mm gaps. What is each column’s width?
Show answer
Two gaps: 2 × 6 = 12 mm. Width = (170 − 12) ÷ 3 = 158 ÷ 3 = 52.7 mm (to 1 decimal place).
2. Text width is 174 mm, two columns, 12 mm gap. Column width?
Show answer
(174 − 12) ÷ 2 = 162 ÷ 2 = 81 mm.
3. Only page 3 of a report must be landscape. What do you insert?
Show answer
Section breaks (next page type) before and after page 3, so that only that section has landscape orientation.
Where this leads next
Next, create a table with consistent headings. Tables also have to fit the text width you calculated here, and the ICT practical task and evidence checker lists the layout checks.
Section breaks are one of the settings people forget under time pressure. Online one-to-one ICT tuition lets a teacher rehearse them with you until they are routine.