Between-character kerning for justified lines

[Karl Perry]

I've looked on the Web for answers but have not yet found anything.

Using Word 2002 SP3 on WinXP Pro.

In narrow fully-justified paragraphs, body text often contains wide gaps
between words. I've improved this somewhat by turning on "Do full
justification like Wordperfect 6.x for Windows," but it's still not right.

"Professional" type publishing programs add whitespace/kerning between
characters within words to lessen the amount of whitespace between words.
Is it possible to get Word to do this automatically?

TIA,

Karl Perry

 

[Jezebel]

Word's typography is a pig's breakfast at the best of times. If you need
good typography, Word is not the program to use.

 

[Robert]

Greetings--
Maybe you could try using expanded character spacing.

 

[Karl Perry]

Word's typography is a pig's breakfast at the best of times. If you need
good typography, Word is not the program to use.

For the kinds of things I generally do, Word does fine - I don't need great
typography. However, it would be nice for narrow columns to look nice to -
hence my question.

Unfortunately I don't really have an alternative at the moment.

Karl

 

[Karl Perry]

Greetings--
Maybe you could try using expanded character spacing.

Yeah - but that applies to all characters in a selection, and has to be
controlled manually. I'm looking for a setting that will make Word be more
intelligent for an entire document so I don't have to do things by hand.

These are proposals, not brochures. They don't, in general, need to be a
typographer's dream - I just would prefer them not to be so much of a
nightmare.

Looks like I'm stuck with what Word gives us.

Karl

 

[Jezebel]

The best you can do, using Word for narrow columns, is not to justify at
all. Ragged right has been proved to be more readable in any case,
particular if the justification is poor, which with Word it always is.

 

[Robert]

Greetings--
Expanded character spacing can be part of a style. If you make it part of
the document Normal style, it will be applied to all of it.

 

[Jezebel]

Greetings--
Expanded character spacing can be part of a style. If you make it part of
the document Normal style, it will be applied to all of it.
--

That's why it doesn't help for this purpose.

 

[Robert]

Greetings--
If you want to restrict expanded character spacing to a specific type of
paragraph, it is as easy to create any appropriate style with this feature
and apply it to the relevant paragraphs. Where is the problem?
I have personally used this trick quite successfully. It does serve this
purpose.

 

[Jezebel]

The problem is that for typographic purposes the expansion is specific to
the *line* not the paragraph. One of the objectives in typography is to
minimise the variation in the width of the spaces between words. This can be
difficult if you are justifying to a narrow measure -- if there is just one
space within the line, it has to take up ALL the justification space for the
line. One typographic method for dealing with the problem is to cheat a
little and increase the character spacing *in that line* -- but not in other
lines in the same paragraph. Top-end typography programs do this
automatically.

 

[Klaus Linke]

Top-end typography programs do this

automatically.

"Top-end" excludes the most widely used ones like Quark and InDesign, I
guess?

The main problems in Word seems to me the rather large default space, and
the fact that hyphenation doesn't always works as well as one could wish.
WP justification helps with the former, and you can check/improve on
hyphenation manually.

One thing to look out for is that kerning is enabled (Format > Font >
Character spacing).

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Jezebel]

Kerning obviously won't help for this problem, though.

 

[Klaus Linke]

Kerning obviously won't help for this problem, though.

Well, the topic was "between-character kerning", and many, many users don't
even know that this is turned off by default.

Klaus

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi Jezebel,

BTW, I'd be interested in some source for your statements. What typesetting
systems do use variations in letter spacing to justify lines?

I've seen it only used in some newspapers, and it looked ghastly.

I could imagine that it might make some sense for newspapers if used very,
very sparingly and carefully.
But unless your columns are very narrow, it simply isn't needed.

Greetings,
Klaus

 

[Robert]

The problem is that for typographic purposes the expansion is specific to
the *line* not the paragraph. One of the objectives in typography is to
minimise the variation in the width of the spaces between words. This can be
difficult if you are justifying to a narrow measure -- if there is just one
space within the line, it has to take up ALL the justification space for the
line. One typographic method for dealing with the problem is to cheat a
little and increase the character spacing *in that line* -- but not in other
lines in the same paragraph. Top-end typography programs do this
automatically.

Greetings--
With Word 2003, styles can be applied to part of a paragraph only if need
be (using the so-called "StyleSeparator" command.)
So expanded character spacing can be part of a style and can be applied to
any length of text, as desired.
But of course, this has to be done manually.

 

[Jezebel]

Absolutely right that it usually looks awful. But typography is the art of
compromise: awful as it might look, the alternatives (such as a 3em word
space) might be worse). Then again -- as with a great deal of typography --
if it's done well you don't notice it.

And yes, it's normally only newspapers that print to columns narrow enough
to need it.

 

[Jezebel]

With Word 2003, styles can be applied to part of a paragraph only if need
be (using the so-called "StyleSeparator" command.)
So expanded character spacing can be part of a style and can be applied to
any length of text, as desired.
But of course, this has to be done manually.

Exactly. That was the OP's complaint in the first place.

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi Jezebel,

Now *I* have to agree 100% with you.

BTW, remember when we discussed how "proper" typesetting programs optimized
line breaks globally (Knuth...)?
Well, I got myself InDesign recently.
Right on the first book I did with it, the editor who proof-read it marked
*every* line where InDesign had put a word on the next line because of
global optimizations as an error.
Since I couldn't convince him that this was aesthetically more pleasing and
the proper way to do left-justified text, I finally had to break hundreds
of lines by hand to "fix" it :-(

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Jezebel]

I do remember the discussion.

Perhaps you should have 'fixed' the editor ...

If you're interested in typographical arcana, have a look at 'Le Ton Beau de
Marot' by Hofstatter (he of Godel Escher and Bach fame) -- see if you can
pick the typographic jokes. It's cute, but also a classic example of why
writers -- even clever ones -- shouldn't be allowed to do their own
typography!

Do you want a "I'd rather be kerning" bumper sticker?

 

[Klaus Linke]

Perhaps you should have 'fixed' the editor ...

I'm Walter Mitty the Undefeatable, and editors cannot faze me.

Do you want a "I'd rather be kerning" bumper sticker?

"Kerning" sounds like a fun thing to do... By all means!

Regards,
Klaus