What is a hard page break versus a soft page break?
In word processing, a hard page break is a break that occurs at
a particular place in the text, forcing the next word to the top of
a new page. A hard break never changes its position relative to the
text even if words before it are deleted, so the new page will
always start with the same word even if text on prior page doesn't
extend to the bottom margin. Because they occur at a specific point
in the text, hard page breaks are normally inserted manually by the
document's author.
A soft page break is a break whose position is determined by the
word processing program when the document's text fills one page to
its bottom margin. The following word is forced to the top of a new
page, but if text in the prior page is deleted words from the next
page are moved back.