Creating newspaper style text in columns

[Mary2214]

I need to type a column so that each line of text adjusts the word spacing to
make all lines the same width, like in a newspaper column. In other words,
each line may have different word spacing but all start on the left margin
and end on the left margin. I am not good in Word an cannot figure this out.

 

[PJY]

Format, columns, then select equal width

 

[Jay Freedman]

Text that has both sides aligned like that has the paragraph alignment set to
"Justified" (instead of Left, Centered, or Right).

If only a little text is to be done this way, you can use the Justify button on
the Formatting toolbar (in Word 2003 or earlier) or in the Paragraph group of
the Home ribbon (in Word 2007), or the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J. You could set
the Alignment in the Format Paragraph dialog instead.

If you have a large amount of text to justify, you should add that to the
definition of a paragraph style that you apply to the text.

You should be aware that justifying text in very narrow columns can look very
bad, because sometimes it requires very large spaces between words. Hyphenation
can help somewhat, but you should also try to avoid having hyphens at the ends
of more than three or four consecutive lines. Many newspapers have changed to
left-aligned (also called ragged right) columns because it looks better.