I frequently experience what appears to be a problem with the Article class. I am using two-column format with some floats for figures. The figures take about 1/4 to 1/3 of the height of a column. Sometimes, two figures get pushed to one column, most of the time with no problems, leaving room for some text in the same column. Other times, the two figures occupy the entire column and leave lots of empty white space above and below each figure but no text there. I can’t figure out what causes it to happen except that it can happen after adding or deleting some text before the first of the figures; likewise, it can revert to correct layout after adding or deleting some text before the first figure.
I use some defaults and some non-defaults in the Document -> Settings dialog box. There are numerous equations. LyX 2.3.2, macOS 10.11.6. Here is my preamble: % Customize character size in captions. \usepackage{caption} \captionsetup[figure]{font=small} % Drop cap \usepackage{lettrine} %\usepackage{multicol} % Currently using "abstract" only for \saythanks. \usepackage{abstract} % Try to change section, subsection... font sizes. \usepackage{titlesec} \titleformat{\section} {\normalfont\fontsize{12}{15}\bfseries}{\thesection}{1em}{} \titleformat{\subsection} {\normalfont\fontsize{10}{12}\bfseries}{\thesubsection}{1em}{} % Allow amsmath to make IEEE-style equation line breaks across pages and columns. \interdisplaylinepenalty=2500 Here is a screen shot of thumbnails of three pages. The first and last are correctly formatted but the right column of the middle page shows the problem.
PastedGraphic-1.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document
Jerry