How to fix full justification spacing?

Queen@discussions.microsoft.com Editorial Queen

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Jul 27, 2005, 4:29:03 PM7/27/05

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When using "full" justification, the word and line spacing is sometimes
stretched out to extreme proportions. How do you fix this in Word? I am
doing newsletter layout and this drives me bats.

Jay Freedman

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Jul 27, 2005, 5:15:20 PM7/27/05

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Go to Tools > Options > Compatibility and check the item "Do full
justification like WordPerfect 6.x for Windows". That will make Word try to
pull a word back from the following line by condensing spaces first, and
expand the spaces only if that doesn't work. The results are usually much
better than Word's default justification algorithm.

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Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

Klaus Linke

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Jul 27, 2005, 11:30:03 PM7/27/05

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And make sure you are using automatic hyphenation (Tools > Language >
Hyphenation...), and maybe reduce the hyphenation area in that dialog
(especially if you are using narrow columns).

Regards,
Klaus

Editorial Queen

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Jul 30, 2005, 5:13:02 AM7/30/05

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Thanks.

Editorial Queen

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Jul 30, 2005, 5:12:05 AM7/30/05

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Thanks. I knew there was a way to "fool" Word, I just didn't find it. A
good one.

Gwynne

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Jan 14, 2007, 11:27:53 AM1/14/07

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Hi,
Like the previous post, I am having issues with the words being spaced
way too far apart when the text is full justified. I tried both Jay and
Klaus' resolutions and neither worked. I am using word 2003 small
business edition. Any further suggestions on how to fix the word
spacing so it looks normal and not stretched out?

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Gwynne
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Doug Robbins - Word MVP

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Jan 14, 2007, 12:32:03 PM1/14/07

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It is not possible to tell from your post what was previously suggested to
you and in just what way it is not working.

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Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

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Robert M. Franz (RMF)

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Jan 15, 2007, 1:05:40 AM1/15/07

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Hi Doug

Doug Robbins - Word MVP wrote:
> It is not possible to tell from your post what was previously suggested to
> you and in just what way it is not working.

What, you're not showing messages back two years ...? :-)

[me neither ...]

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.word.pagelayout/browse_thread/thread/a3a729c9c5d89684/616cf396b47eccda?lnk=st&q=&rnum=1#616cf396b47eccda

Gwynne, the Compatibility option suggested by Jay works wonders IMHO.
It's a different algorithm than the standard "fill up line as long as
possible, then expand the spaces" approach. But of course it has its
limits and, AFAICT, does not take the surrinding lines into account (as,
for instance, the TeX justification algorithm seems to be doing).

As a rule of thumb, the shorter your lines are, the more problematic
justification becomes. Especially when dealing with very long words, you
need to hyphenate (manually if you can afford to).

2cents
Robert
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