How can I balance word spacing in each line of a justified paragra

[Ozma]

The following paragraph is justified, using Arial 10 and 1" margins on letter
paper:

A directory which lists participating hospitals will be provided upon
request, without charge as a separate document. Directories are also
available at http://www.eha.md/ (Oregon) and http://www.beechstreet.com/
(Nationwide).

The word spacing on line 1 is normal, while line 2 is quite spread out. I
can make it look right by entering a manual line-break. However, I'd like to
cause it to look right without resorting to brute force.

Any suggestions?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Have you tried hyphenating "available"?

 

[CyberTaz]

Did you copy this para from your doc & paste it into the post? If so here
are a couple of observations, but *first* turn on your invisible characters
(Show/Hide ¶)...

First, remove the double space between the 2 sentences... that is a
throwback to the manual typewriter which can cause text flow/formatting
inconsistencies.

Second, the little 'circles' between some words (they look like degree
symbols) represent non-breaking spaces which, although they can be quite
useful, are inappropriately used here. They serve no purpose where they are
inserted & are adjacent to regular spaces (which pretty much defeats their
whole purpose).

Third, replace the regular space between the words "charge" & "as" with a
single soft return, then see how it looks.

Keep in mind that any time you're dealing with justified alignment the
spacing on adjacent lines is likely to present a similar problem.
Unfortunately, Word doesn't provide the necessary typesetting features to
make the adjustments as readily as what a DTP program might offer - FWIW, I
try to stay away from justified text in Word as much as I can.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

To clarify one thing: when you paste text from Word into an email or NG
message, a single space is rendered as an ordinary space. When there are
runs of multiple spaces, the additional ones will be rendered as nonbreaking
spaces. That's because HTML (not that this is HTML, but apparently it
follows the same rules) does not honor multiple spaces unless they're
nonbreaking. If text from a NG message is pasted back into Word, it of
course also has acquired line breaks where the newsreader inserted them.

 

[Stefan Blom]

In addition to using hyphenation, you may also want to enable the
compatibility option to "Do full justification like WordPerfect 6.x
for Windows" (Tools>Options, Compatibility tab).

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


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