(latex2e.info)Page breaking

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10 Page breaking
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Ordinarily LaTeX automatically takes care of breaking output into pages
with its usual aplomb.  But if you are writing commands, or tweaking the
final version of a document, then you may need to understand how to
influence its actions.

   LaTeX's algorithm for splitting a document into pages is more complex
than just waiting until there is enough material to fill a page and
outputting the result.  Instead, LaTeX typesets more material than would
fit on the page and then chooses a break that is optimal in some way (it
has the smallest badness).  An example of the advantage of this approach
is that if the page has some vertical space that can be stretched or
shrunk, such as with rubber lengths between paragraphs, then LaTeX can
use that to avoid widow lines (where a new page starts with the last
line of a paragraph; LaTeX can squeeze the extra line onto the first
page) and orphans (where the first line of paragraph is at the end of a
page; LaTeX can stretch the material of the first page so the extra line
falls on the second page).  Another example is where LaTeX uses
available vertical shrinkage to fit on a page not just the header for a
new section but also the first two lines of that section.

   But LaTeX does not optimize over the entire document's set of page
breaks.  So it can happen that the first page break is great but the
second one is lousy; to break the current page LaTeX doesn't look as far
ahead as the next page break.  So occasionally you may want to influence
page breaks while preparing a final version of a document.

   Note: Layout for more material that is relevant to page breaking.

\clearpage & \cleardoublepage

Start a new page; eject floats.

\newpage

Start a new page.

\enlargethispage

Enlarge the current page a bit.

\pagebreak & \nopagebreak

Forcing & avoiding page breaks.