how do i get rid of extra spaces in justified text?

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If there are actually extra spaces (which you can see by displaying
nonprinting characters), you can delete them, but the way text is justified
is by expanding the spaces on the line. If a line is too "loose," one way to
tighten it up is to hyphenate judiciously.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[grammatim]

It would have been nice if you'd told us what you meant ...

(1) If the words in each justified line aren't spaced out evenly, then
Find all sequences of two spaces and Replace with one space. Keep
repeating until it reports that it made 0 changes.

(2) If the words are too far apart, turn on Hyphenation.

 

[Jay Freedman]

If there are actually extra spaces (which you can see by displaying
nonprinting characters), you can delete them, but the way text is justified
is by expanding the spaces on the line. If a line is too "loose," one way to
tighten it up is to hyphenate judiciously.

Something else that often helps is to turn on "Do full justification like
WordPerfect".

In Word 2003 or earlier, go to Tools > Options > Compatibility and check that
option.

In Word 2007, go to Office button > Word Options > Advanced, scroll all the way
to the bottom and click the Layout Options button, and check that option.

The difference is that Word's default justification only expands the spaces
between words. The WordPerfect option tries to compress the spaces first; if
that doesn't work, then it expands them. This often improves the appearance.

 

[grammatim]

Something else that often helps is to turn on "Do full justification like
WordPerfect".

In Word 2003 or earlier, go to Tools > Options > Compatibility and check that
option.

In Word 2007, go to Office button > Word Options > Advanced, scroll all the way
to the bottom and click the Layout Options button, and check that option.

The difference is that Word's default justification only expands the spaces
between words. The WordPerfect option tries to compress the spaces first;if
that doesn't work, then it expands them. This often improves the appearance.

Interesting! It would be nice if MS had somewhere explained that and
any of the other "compatibility" options.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Interesting! It would be nice if MS had somewhere explained that and
any of the other "compatibility" options.

They did, although it isn't easy to find if you don't know to look for it:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=288792.

 

[grammatim]

They did, although it isn't easy to find if you don't know to look for it:http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=288792.

At least some of those descriptions were accessible through Help, but
many of them still contain zero information, such as: "Lay out
footnotes like Word 6.x/95/97: This option positions footnotes as they
were in earlier versions of Word." It turned out, in fact, that if
that option is checked, your footnotes can end up many pages away from
their references! And items reading "Used in East Asian word
processing" don't exactly help people who are actually doing East
Asian word processing!

Is there one of those for 2007, where the list in Help stops precisely
at the beginning of Compatibility Options?

 

[Jay Freedman]

At least some of those descriptions were accessible through Help, but
many of them still contain zero information, such as: "Lay out
footnotes like Word 6.x/95/97: This option positions footnotes as they
were in earlier versions of Word." It turned out, in fact, that if
that option is checked, your footnotes can end up many pages away from
their references! And items reading "Used in East Asian word
processing" don't exactly help people who are actually doing East
Asian word processing!

Is there one of those for 2007, where the list in Help stops precisely
at the beginning of Compatibility Options?

No, it seems the documentation people haven't gotten around to writing a KB
article for the 2007 version; at least, I couldn't locate it. For the options
that are also present in the previous versions, the existing article's
descriptions are still valid. I haven't done a study of any that are new to
2007.