As far the "rivers," there is an option in Word when using justified text to ge t rid of the rivers. It does not look good on screen when using this option, bu t the printed version is excellent. See the article below.
The name of the option below is for Word 2000. I can't find that option in Word 2003. There's another option called "Set the width of a space like WordPerfect 5.x." Perhaps that does the same thing. Regards, Shmuel Wolfson ---------------- The 'rivers' (rivers = gaps between the words in paragraphs) are never as well adjusted in Word as you'd find in a professionally published document. It sounds terribly pernickety I know, but I would migrate from Word for this reason alone. ----------------- The following article below the picture is from Woody's Offfice Watch email list. It is important for us to consider this option when composing a manual using Justification for paragraph styles. At 09:11 AM 09/06/01 -0400, Woody's Office Watch wrote: 2. "SQUISHED" JUSTIFICATION IN WORD My old friend Dermod Quirke sent me this Word tip for justifying text. It's an amazing discovery. Quoth Dermod: "For me, the worst feature of Word is its primitive handling of justified text. If I type a fully-justified document, some lines are quite densely packed, but others have large, ugly gaps between the words. The overall effect is patchy and amateurish, and certainly not up to acceptable typesetting quality. "The reason is that Word justifies text only by ADDING space between words. So as it nears the end of a line, Word tries to fit the next word into the remaining space. If it won't fit, Word distributes the remaining space between the words already on the line, and moves the next word to the next line. And if that word is a long one, the space that has to be inserted between the existing words is large and unsightly. "OK, that's how Word handles justification. What's the alternative? Well, why not REDUCE the space between words instead? If a long word won't quite fit the line, the program could try to make room for it by moving the existing words closer together. Of course, there has to be a limit: the program, or the user, must define a minimum (and a maximum) acceptable inter-word space. But subject to these limits, inter-word spacing becomes noticeably more even and less patchy. "Sounds unrealistic? Well, that's how WordPerfect handles justification. Dammit, it's how my venerable old mid-80s word processor (Spellbinder DTP) handled it. And the results are DRAMATICALLY better than Word's clumsy, amateurish justification. "Now here's the good news: Word 2000 is capable of producing proper WordPerfect-style justification as described above. Just click Tools|Options, select the Compatibility tab, and check the box beside "Do full justification like Word Perfect 6.x for Windows". "Type some text with Ctrl-J justification, and watch what happens as you come to the end of the line. Instead of prematurely wrapping, the text will actually shuffle to the left and try to fit the word onto the current line. "Now try it with an existing document. Make sure it's fully justified (type Ctrl+A to select the entire document, then type Ctrl+J to justify it); then print a page. Now activate WP-style justification (Tools|Options, Compatibility, check "Do full justification..."); and print the same page. "Compare the two print-outs: you'll find that the WP-style page has fewer ugly gaps between words. "You can use this trick whenever you want to produce slicker, more professional typesetting, and it works pretty well. But although the printed text will look very good, the screen display will NOT, because Microsoft has made no attempt to implement proper WYSIWYG. So you'll find that the words at the start of each screen line are widely spaced, while those at the end of each line are crammed together. But when the line is printed, the spaces will be evenly distributed throughout the line. "To sum up: Word now allows you to produce professional-quality justified text. But it's hidden away in an obscure corner of the program, and it doesn't display properly on the screen. Menachem Mendel Rosen
