Another hard question: My text won't justify properly.

[nickravo1]

I am trying to make a page in Word look exactly like a page in a book;
I have it all done except I cannot justify, properly. When I use
justify, it seems to insert some hyphens and break some longer words,
but most of the lines on the right side are running ragged. I need it
as sooth as a ruler. Can I fix this in word or do I need to use Quark
or inDesign?

 

[nickravo1]

I am trying to make a page in Word look exactly like a page in a book;
I have it all done except I cannot justify, properly. When I use
justify, it seems to insert some hyphens and break some longer words,
but most of the lines on the right side are running ragged. I need it
as sooth as a ruler. Can I fix this in word or do I need to use Quark
or inDesign?

I just read I need "full justification". Is this available in Word for
Mac 2008. Or, as a last resort, I can use Word 2007 in my partitioned
drive.

 

[nickravo1]

I just read I need "full justification". Is this available in Word for
Mac 2008. Or, as a last resort, I can use Word 2007 in my partitioned
drive.

I assume this means it's not possible.

 

[CyberTaz]

I wouldn't say it's not possible, but it's highly unlikely

Unless you know exactly what margin settings, what specific fonts (and have
access to them), what kerning & leading adjustments, hyphenation rules &
other typesetting specs, etc. were used in the printing of the book you're
not likely to succeed. Even an application with more sophisticated
typography tools won't do you much good if you don't know what composition
features & settings you're trying to replicate.

FWIW, I'm not certain that Justified (let alone Full Justified) text is any
longer 'en vogue' for document layout in the first place... But admittedly
that standard varies a great deal.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John McGhie]

The definition of "Full" justification is a little cloudy.

Word has three types of justification available on the Paragraph properties
of the Style object: Left, Right, and "Justified".

Justified will give you aligned margins left and right (both sides). See
the help topic " Align or justify text" for more.

If you also enable hyphenation, and set the hyphenation zone to something
sensible, you will get fairly good results. See the help topic " Control
hyphenation" for more.

However, printing industry professionals would assume that "Full
justification" would mean varying the width of spaces, the level of kerning,
the amount of tracking, and the level of hyphenation.

Word's justification won't adjust kerning or tracking. So while you will
get it very close with some experimentation, Word will not do as well as a
commercial typesetter

As Bob has already mentioned, you should ask yourself "Why am I doing this?"
Research proves that justifying text simply makes it difficult to read.
Modern readers consider such a page design "boring and old-fashioned."

I do not hyphenate or justify text any longer: readers who are not as
ancient as me hate it

Cheers

I assume this means it's not possible.

--

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John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Nhulunbuy, NT, Australia. mailto:[email protected]