How to Fix Awkward Spaces in Justified Text?

[MinimusDix]

Hey everyone,

I'm working on a book and using justified text, but I'm noticing awkward spaces between words. I've already enabled auto-hyphenation (set to every two lines), but the spacing still looks uneven.
Is there a way to make the justification look smoother?

Thank you.

[Woody44]

Not automatically.

As a self-published author who has formatted all my own books for print, this is something I have wrestled with, and there is no easy solution. You can try using a different font, you can try increasing or decreasing the font size by a half point either way, and if that doesn't achieve an acceptable result ... you have to resort to the brute force method.

Most of your lines will probably be okay. In reality, if your writing is any good the average reader will (hopefully) be sufficiently engaged in the words that they won't notice if the word spacing is a bit too large here and there -- unless it gets to be MUCH too large.

If you have a few such places in the book, you can try adjusting them by highlighting an offending line and going into the format > character > spacing dialogue box. Look for the Letter spacing option, and try increasing it to 105% or 110%. Be sure the box next to Kerning is checked.

You can try going beyond 110% for character spacing, but you have to be careful not to make the line you're working on look too obviously different from the rest of the book body.

To be honest, I don't worry about it any more. If I get a book where it's a problem, I would look at changing the type size, or just use a different font.

[lgsl]

TextMaker is a word processor not a DTP program. You can, as Woody44 said, make it work on TextMaker. He's response is correct however keep in mind that the results will always be amateurish because TM is not the right tool for the job. Neither is LibreOffice or MS Word. One can always tell when a book was layout out on a Word Processor or a DTP. Word processors will never give you the necessary control over the text.

[MinimusDix]

Thanks for the replies! I will try to fix it as Woody44 suggested because it seems to work. I would use Scribus, but the time it requires to learn and my deadline make it impractical for now.

[Woody44]

TextMaker is a word processor not a DTP program. You can, as Woody44 said, make it work on TextMaker. He's response is correct however keep in mind that the results will always be amateurish because TM is not the right tool for the job. Neither is LibreOffice or MS Word. One can always tell when a book was layout out on a Word Processor or a DTP. Word processors will never give you the necessary control over the text.

(emphasis added)

This is very true, yet I maintain that what I wrote about most (and by that I mean at least 95%) of readers not noticing if you've done a half decent job with a word processor holds true. Remember, most readers are ... readers. They are not graphic artists and they are not book designers. If you spend a bit of time looking at self-published books on Amazon (all you need is to use the 'Look inside" option, you don't need to buy anything), you'll quickly discover that there is so much absolute dreck out there that a book done reasonably well using a word processor can really stand head and shoulders above the competition.

Also remember that for a huge number of readers, their preferred format isn't quality hardcover books, it's mass-market paperbacks. Those generally break enough of the rules that it's not difficult to look at least as professional using a word processor.

It's a sad commentary on the state of self-publishing that there are so many truly horrible books out there it's not difficult to look great in comparison.

[lgsl]

Indeed, this is true. Even big publishers have been doing this since a few years back. They do not care any more about presenting a nice layout. Not even they pretend to care of publishing well written books, all they care about is selling, whatever it is. It is quite sad, still this is no excuse. If yo u can do it right, then do so. Self-publishing, and specially self.promoting your book is hard enough in an over saturated market full of junk. Every bit counts.