Formatting issue

[Paul]

Hello, group. My name is Paul. I am using Word 2002. Here is my
problem. I am editing a 380-page document that someone else sent to me.
I am having to justify all the paragraphs. If the last words of a
paragraph do not fill up the line, they are stretched
out, so the last line looks
like this, or worse.
And when I align the last line with the left margin, Word aligns the
whole paragraph with the left margin. And there goes my justification.

Someone suggested to me that the problem could be that the person who
sent me the document used soft returns instead of hard returns. I
checked, and they used hard returns. Can anyone suggest any other
possible solutions to this? I would really be grateful if they could.
Thank you.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Make sure that you're justifying with Ctrl+J and not Ctrl+Shift+J
(Distribute Text). Also, there are some cases where line breaks will be
displayed as paragraph breaks. Try deleting one and pressing Enter to
replace it. Does that make any difference?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Paul]

Dear Suzanne,

Thank you for writing back to me. I saw something in an earlier
discussion of this problem about Control + J instead of Control + Shift
+ J. I tried that, but it only worked once. I have been justifying my
text by clicking on the justification icon on my toolbar. Is that a bad
idea? And what do I need to do before I hit Control +J? Where
do I need to have my cursor? Thank you again.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Ctrl+J anywhere in the paragraph, but it should perform the exact same
command as the toolbar button. I'm guessing you have line breaks
masquerading as paragraph breaks, though.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Paul]

Thank you again, Suzanne. If I do have line breaks masquerading as page
breaks, how can I tell? What keys do I need to hit, or where do I need
to click? And how do I get rid of them?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I suggested earlier that you delete one of the "paragraph breaks" and
replace it by pressing Enter.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Paul]

Thank you again, Suzanne. I will be glad to try that. What do I need to
do to get Word to show me line breaks, paragraph breaks, and so on?

 

[Greg Maxey]

CTRL+Shift+*

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.