Is full justification available in Microsoft Word 2003 or 2007? Wh

[ancientseeker]

"Full Justification" is a typographical standard which results in all lines
having exactly the same length. For a definition, see for instance Wikipedia.
I have Word 2003 and I cannot find how to produce full justification. There
are actually two kinds: (1) without hyphenation of some of the words at the
ends of the lines, and (2) with hyphenation. The second kind is capable of
producing essentially perfect justification. It is used in TeX, LaTex, and
all good newspapers. There are no ragged edges on the right side at all!

 

[Tom Ferguson]

In word, justification is implemented as a paragraph property. Navigate to
Format Paragraph. You can also "turn it on" viz. apply it using a keyboard
shortcut (Ctrl j) or clicking on an icon on the formatting toolbar.

Word does hyphenation. Page Layout Hyphenate.

 

[DeanH]

Look under Format, Paragraph, Alignment, choose Justified.
Hyphenation is under Tools, Language, Hyphenation.
Try the Word Help for further information. That is the limit of Word's
built-in justification capabilites, if you require further exactitude you
probably need a publishing package, maybe Publisher?
Hope this helps
DeanH

 

[ancientseeker]

Thank you, Tom. This "Format Paragraph --> Justified" procedure is OK, but
it is not "Full Justification". The latter involves very small changes in all
the spacings between adjacent characters and it is essentially undetectable.
Look at a good newspaper: you cannot tell at all which spacings have been
changed. Here, on the other hand, only the spacings between words have been
adjusted and in some cases it is very apparent that some spacings are
abnormal. I am the editor for a two-column newsletter and, because of the
relative narrowness of the columns, this effect with Word 2003 is quite
evident; sometimes it is even ugly! I do agree that for a document with the
full width of the page the result is usually all right, especially with a
fairly small font. But it is not what newspaper people call full
justification. Does Word 2007 do a better job?

Thanks all the same,
ancientseeker

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

There would be no difference with Word 2007. Word is a Word Processor, not
a Publishing Program. Microsoft Office Publisher has a Distributed
paragraph formatting option that does more like what you are after.
--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Graham Mayor]

You may find Word 2003 produces a better appearance if you set tools >
options > compatibility > do full justification like Word Perfect 6 for
Windows. The same option is available to Word 2007.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP


<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>

 

[Tom Ferguson]

Word 2007 is the same in this, as far as I know.

If you have been blessed with an abnormally large amount of patience and
perseverance, you can manually adjust every pair by adjusting the kerning.
Format Font Character Spacing Spacing. But, in my view, life is too
short to do much of that.

You could try using the "Dispersed" paragraph formatting. Keyboard shortcut
Ctrl J, i.e. Ctrl shift j. It was intended for Thai and like languages and
the result is not usually useful aside from that, in my view. However, there
it is.

Others here suggested a couple of other options. In particular, you need a
page layout program rather than a word processor for such typographic
niceties.

Tom
MSMVP 1998-2007

 

[ancientseeker]

Look under Format, Paragraph, Alignment, choose Justified.
Hyphenation is under Tools, Language, Hyphenation.
Try the Word Help for further information. That is the limit of Word's
built-in justification capabilites, if you require further exactitude you
probably need a publishing package, maybe Publisher?
Hope this helps
DeanH

 

[ancientseeker]

Thanks to all of you, Tom, Doug, Graham, and Dean for helping me with this.
From you I learned that Word does not cut it. Fortunately I also learned
that Publisher does cut it! I discovered Publisher on my computer, where it
has been since the beginning, but I had never used it since I did not know
what it could do. You told me. Now I am using Publisher to publish my
newsletter. It actually has two different justification schemes, one it calls
"justified" and one it calls "distributed". Neither is really what I call
100%, but "distributed" is at least 95% and that is plenty good enough for
the job! So, thanks again.

 

[Tom Ferguson]

You are welcome. I am glad you found Publisher suitable.

I have the odd habit of referring to "distributed" as "dispersed". Word will
do that as well. However, I suspect you will find Publisher more suited to
your purpose.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You can use the Distribute command in Word as well (Ctrl+Shift+J), but the
result is that the last line of a paragraph is also justified.