Full Justification makes spaces between words uneven - how to break the last word of a line in two?

Question

I am writing  a long document - a collection of stories. With a full justification on both sides, spaces between words are uneven, often stretched out to be justified. How can I break the last word of a line so that the rest of the characters in the word go to the next line?

Answer 1

An optional hyphen can be seen if you have nonprinting characters displayed. It will appear as ¬. Without nonprinting characters displayed, you won't see it unless the break falls at the end of a line, in which case a hyphen will be displayed.

You should not be using a hyphen with inclusive numbers (such as dates); instead you should use an en dash (which by default is a breaking character). Like Stefan, I don't understand what trailing spaces have to do with it. If the issue is the last line of a paragraph, then either the line ends in a line break instead of a paragraph break or you have inadvertently used Distribute Text (Ctrl+Shift+J) instead of Justify (Ctrl+J).

Answer 2

See: http://www.officetooltips.com/word/tips/using_automatic_hyphenation.html

You may also get better results if you set Word's 'Layout Options' to apply WordPerfect 6 justification. See under File|Options|Advanced>Layout Options (way down at the bottom).

Thanks. 

I also found one way to wrap trailing spaces to next line by the following:

Go to File>Options>Advanced and scroll to the bottom of the dialog and expand the Layout Options item and then check the box for "Wrap trailing spaces to next line".

I still have problems with the using of an hyphenation in the document. After the above, hyphenations  screw up the line. So I had to remove all existing hyphenation such as (1642 AD -1662 AD).  Any hyphenation in the document expand the spaces and makes spacing in the line awful.

Answer 3

In this way I cannot use hyphenation in such case as 1642 AD -1662 AD. A hyphen disarrays the entire line. 

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Note: I  could not use "Do full justification the way word perfect 6+ for window does." because  it still gave uneven spaces after full justification, taking more pages.)

If you want to keep all of 1642 AD -1662 AD on the same line, simply use non-breaking spaces instead of ordinary spaces. Non-breaking spaces are created via Ctrl-Shift-Space.

I find your comments re WordPerfect 6 justification strange. In my experience (with many documents created over a period spanning at least two decades)), it has always reduced the amount of space used by the text, both in the document body and in footnotes, endnotes, etc. (i.e. resulting in fewer pages, not more). Are you sure that option wasn't already checked and that you unchecked it instead of checking it?

Answer 4

May I ask why you need the "Wrap trailing spaces to next line" compatibility option? Instead of adding excessive space characters, you can use indents and tabs to "move" text.

Answer 5

See: http://www.officetooltips.com/word/tips/using_automatic_hyphenation.html

You may also get better results if you set Word's 'Layout Options' to apply WordPerfect 6 justification. See under File|Options|Advanced>Layout Options (way down at the bottom).