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Quoleena
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Feb 04, 2016 04:11PM
For those writing books in Word (I use 2010), is there a streamlined way to clear up the ugly, inconsistent white spacing between words when you justify? For my last two books I did it manually, and it took a few strands of dark brown and turned them gray. Any suggestions, hints, etc? I don't know any other program, like Scrivener, so I don't want to transfer the manual time to learning another program. Any suggestions would be awesome!
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What is the problem, exactly? I use Word 2010 and use full justification with no problems.
The inconsistent spacing between words
Mine looks just fine.Can you screen capture an example?
Quoleena wrote: "The inconsistent spacing between words"As far as I know, it's a direct result of the justification process. If you look at the printed books on your shelves, you will see that some of them have justified text, and that the spacing is inconsistent, although subtly so. The "Justify" function, as described in Word 2013, is a way to "distribute your text evenly within the margins" -- and to do that, the spaces cannot possibly be equal in width.
Unless: I'm pretty sure that to completely equalize that spacing, so that each space is exactly the same width, you'll have to put in a ton of hyphenated words; one at the end of almost every line. There might be a formatting trick I don't know about, however.
The only automated way I know of "correcting" the justification-caused inconsistent space widths is to un-justify the document.
I never worry about it because when it gets uploaded to Createspace.com it's all changed anyway.
Gaines wrote: "Quoleena wrote: "The inconsistent spacing between words"As far as I know, it's a direct result of the justification process. If you look at the printed books on your shelves, you will see that so..."
That's how I've done it before - manually adjusting the hyphenation. I was just hoping there was an easier way to do it. Maybe there isn't. Thanks!
Martin wrote: "I never worry about it because when it gets uploaded to Createspace.com it's all changed anyway."Not with a pdf. It's the same as how you upload it.
Quoleena wrote: "That's how I've done it before - manually adjusting the hyphenation. I was just hoping there was an easier way to do it. Maybe there isn't. Thanks! "No worries. For what it's worth, as a reader, I've never been bothered by justified lines in a book whose text has spaces of varying widths. It's simply something I never even noticed until I started writing and thinking about formatting myself. So I doubt many readers would be distracted by it, especially given that justification seems to be the norm (for most fiction, anyway).
It is the result of the justification process. The file you convert to PDF is what is printed. When I see the justify gapping is too awful, I rewrite the sentence just a tad, remove or add a word until it is fixed. I mean we're all writers, right? Anything can be rephrased.
Quoleena wrote: "Martin wrote: "I never worry about it because when it gets uploaded to Createspace.com it's all changed anyway."Not with a pdf. It's the same as how you upload it."
I upload the .docx it comes out sharper.
It all goes out the window with Kindle editions. The readers can set the fonts.
Martin wrote: "Quoleena wrote: "Martin wrote: "I never worry about it because when it gets uploaded to Createspace.com it's all changed anyway."Not with a pdf. It's the same as how you upload it."
I upload the..."
Oh yeah? I'll try that method then. Hopefully that works better than the manual process. Word is lame. One of these days I simply have to learn a better program!
Martin wrote: "It all goes out the window with Kindle editions. The readers can set the fonts."Yep. I've noticed that. Right now I just want to stress about making the paperback look good. I'll go grayer about the ebook after that :)
Quoleena wrote: "I'll go grayer about the ebook after that :) "Wear a hairnet, or better yet, a helmet, so you don't pull it all out and go bald like I did.
There us an automatic hyphenation function, but it tends to hyphenate too much. I think the happy medium is to do it manually. Sorry. :/
With the other two I did auto-hyphenation + manual hyphenation + manual paragraph expanding/condensing = ugh! I just spoke to my brother who's a graphic design student. He said the way around it is to learn In Design or Dreamweaver. I have both, and they look daunting. Boo hiss, Word 2010!
Gaines wrote: "Quoleena wrote: "I'll go grayer about the ebook after that :) "Wear a hairnet, or better yet, a helmet, so you don't pull it all out and go bald like I did."
Ha! I'll have to pull my helmet out of winter storage, but it'll be worth it.
In another forum, it was mentioned that there is Wordperfect 6.X compatibility option for justified text. I use this in Word 2000, and it does look better than the standard Word justification. I'm afraid I can't tell you where this option is in Word 2010. The thread discussing this is here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Personally, we never hyphenate in the print editions.If I see something really obvious while skimming the document, I'll using the font spacing to condense the line by 0.1 to 0.3 pt (more than 0.3 looks too squished in our font) to fix it. As a rule we don't spend more than an hour or two formatting the print edition. It's not worth more effort than that to us.
Owen wrote: "In another forum, it was mentioned that there is Wordperfect 6.X compatibility option for justified text. I use this in Word 2000, and it does look better than the standard Word justification. I'm ..."I found an article on that trick before I made this post. Unfortunately, it makes it worse in 2010.
I've always noticed hyphenation in printed novels. You don't like them?
I did it!!!I used a combination of pretty much everything from above, and it only took half an hour to format it. Thanks everyone for your input!!
Quoleena wrote: "I've always noticed hyphenation in printed novels. You don't like them?"Hyphenation is standard but I don't care for them -- reading thru hyphens tends to bug me more than gaps between words. But the main thing is that Word's auto-hyphenation function doesn't seem to work much better than it "grammar" checking. So doing a job that I'd find acceptable would take more effort that we are will to spend.
Good to know about Word 2010. We format our print editions in Word 2000, and we'll keep doing that.
Funny because I don't like seeing inconsistent gaps in books. To me it looks weird. 2010 handles the auto-hyphenation cleanly, and you can limit the number per page. Perhaps it was one of the updates they made because of that issue. I used the expand/condense CTRL+D feature to avoid having to use too many hyphens. Very happy with the end product.
Mod
Personally, I love Justification, but do I ever hate the everlovin' stuffin' out of hyphens all over the place in my book.
I completely took them out, and honestly you can barely tell in the final product after everything is said and done. (Even in the tiny eBook version)
No stress really about it, it tends to work out either way. Hyphens in the justification really help to make the text shorter though! :D
C.B. wrote: "If you are working in InDesign you can change the justification settings more than you can in word. There are a few more options, and it can really help to fine tune your document.Personally, I l..."
I eyeballed each individual page to make sure it was all consistent.
I have InDesign but no idea how to use it! I'll have to do that before the next book so I don't have to deal with this again.
Mod
Quoleena wrote: "I did it!!!I used a combination of pretty much everything from above, and it only took half an hour to format it. Thanks everyone for your input!!
"
Congrats :-)
