In Compile, I find my page breaks often appear well before the end of the physical page. The breaks seem to appear at the end of a paragraph when, the complete next paragraph won’t fit on the page. I feel like I have looked everywhere in the manuals and tutorials, but just can’t find a reference to how I might correct this issue. Help would be much appreciated.
The first thing I would do is take a look at your book in a reader that does potentially less typesetting, like Calibre’s viewer. And with Calibre you can also edit the ebook and take a look at the HTML itself to see if there is really a page break there.
To me it sounds like you are describing how some readers might attempt a form of widow and orphan protection.
Your compile format might also be exercising widow and orphan control (cf the Text Layout area of your compile settings).
Paragraphs can have Keep With Next set which will also yield the sort of behaviour you are describing. (Cf. Format > Paragraph)
Also, if you have a lot of footnotes, then, depending on what format you are compiling to, you can also see “behavior” as the app with which you are viewing the text tries to negotiate a truce between page breaking and footnote fitting.
gr
P.S. Also, of course, page breaks might be being generated between docs or for the first doc in a subfolder, etc.