Thanks, it was a good thought. However, the styles on the paragraphs are all "Normal", and there is no border set for the Normal style. This morning I cannot duplicate the automatic insertion of this line on new paragraphs. I have seen Word fail to repaint portions of a screen correctly in other situations before; perhaps it was repainting the line when it didn't really exist in the text and only looked like it was duplicating it. The original line really is there, however, and I still don't know how to get rid of it. I retyped the document -- thank heavens it was only 4-5 pages -- and turned off all automatic insertion junque I could find. If anyone has more ideas, I'm still interested. rc