I am setting up some course material for some students and need some help. If a paragraph starts on one page and spills over onto the second page and I ask everyone to turn to the second page paragraph one, line three. Is that the third line of the first new paragraph or the 3rd line of the paragraph that actually started on the other page?
I usually take that as being the first indented paragraph, so whatever is a spillover of the paragraph from the page before doesn't count. If it's only line three of the next page, just refer to it as line 3 to avoid ambiguity.
I'd actually assume the other way ... If I was told to turn to paragraph X on page Y, I'd assume any spillover lines counted as a paragraph for the sake of counting X because that paragraph, even if it started on the last page, is still technically on both pages.
Couldn't you just say turn to page x, line y? If it's in the first part of the page then the line won't be too high to make it difficult to count down to.
Has it changed over the years? Well if it was the 5th paragraph on the page i'd still have the same problem of people not being able to quickly identify which paragraph I mean if the top of the page did not begin with a brand new paragraph....
some good advice above... leaves two workable choices, imo: if it's in the slopover paragraph, say: line 3 on page x if it's in the first full paragraph, say: line 3 of the first full paragraph on page x
