Problem with Justify

[donnercruz]

I chose to justify a paragraph in a paper in which I am working. The
problem is that the last line, which is short, was justified as well.
There are huge spaces between the words and it looks awkward. Is there
a way to have the last line not justified? When I try to have it
aligned to the left, the entire paragraph is aligned left as well.

 

[Oz Springs]

I have just tried this out on a Word document and I do not have this
problem. The last line aligns to the left.

There is something called ³full justify² or ³force justify² but that is in
apps such as InDesign and Quark. It is not available in Word.

One thing I can think of is that you do not have normal spaces between
words. Do you have non-breaking spaces? You can check this by switching on
³show invisibles² in the Preferences/View window. Ordinary spaces are a
little dot, but non-breaking spaces have a dot and a little squiggle.
Replace them with proper spaces by selecting them (or do a find/replace
using ^s) then press the space bar.

When you have all the invisibles showing, check that the end of the
paragraph has a paragraph mark, that is a reverse ³P². If, instead, you have
an end-of-line mark which is a little, curved, arrow pointing to the left,
then you will have a forced-justified line. Delete that mark and press
return and you should find that the last line is not stretched across the
width of the page.

To get an end-of-line mark (or manual line break) you press shift-return. To
search for them, use ^l and replace them with ^p. To get an ordinary
paragraph break, just press the return key.

HTH



Oz

 

[John McGhie]

Make sure the line ends with a real paragraph mark (a "Pilcrow") and not a
carriage-return or new line character.

Word correctly handles the case if the paragraph actually is a paragraph,
but not if it's a "line" with a hard line-ender.

The paragraph mark is not just a pretty face. It's a property container,
that is full of literally hundreds of pieces of information about the
paragraph, including the fact that it is justified but that justification
should be disabled for the last line.

Hope this helps

I chose to justify a paragraph in a paper in which I am working. The
problem is that the last line, which is short, was justified as well.
There are huge spaces between the words and it looks awkward. Is there
a way to have the last line not justified? When I try to have it
aligned to the left, the entire paragraph is aligned left as well.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410