Uddhava wrote:
"RobertVA" wrote:

You ARE going to get large gaps between words if you use full
justification on relatively narrow columns. That's the way it makes the
last word even with the right margin. The effect is particularly
noticeable if there is a long first word on the next line. If you don't
like the gaps you have to switch to Left Justify and put up with the
jagged right edge.


Dear Robert,

Yes I understand why the multiple spaces are there in the original text
(written by someone else) but the question is how to get rid of them - the
align left button will get rid of the muiltiple spaces when the text is
originated by me but doesn't seem to work with text pasted from a web page.
Anyway there is still the problem of short lines. When I write a Word doc,
the right indent marker is at say 15 but some text pasted from the web
ignores my marker at 15 and stops short at say 11.

"...my marker at 15..." You are either using a VERY wide page or metric
measurements in your ruler. Unless the text contains some long words
justification typically works pretty well as long as the column is over
about 3 inches or 75 mm. Unless you use a really small font you will get
some obvious gaps with narrower columns. The text won't usually extend
to the right column where there's a typed return. You can see spaces and
typed returns by clicking the Paragraph symbol on the tool bar (looks
like a backwards "P" with two vertical lines). With that function on
spaces will look like periods.

There are multiple ways of adding spaces in web pages, and the results
you get from a cut and paste may vary with how the page author achieved
the spaces. If the page source contains multiple space between words or
even returns your browser will normally compress the spaces to a single
space. The page author could potentially override this behavior in a
couple of ways, but I'm not sure you want an HTML lesson.

Some people I'm acquainted with clear the formatting from text by
pasting it to a notepad document, copying the text to the clipboard
again from the notepad document and THEN pasting the text in Word. This
will eliminate things like justification, fonts and attributes like
italics and boldface. It probably won't eliminate actual multiple
consecutive spaces, tabs or typed returns.

I don't have the latest version of Word (I have Word 97) BUT I have a
"Paste Special..." option on my "Edit" menu. The pop-up that appears
when I click that option offers an ability to "Paste as unformatted
text". Again this should eliminate everything but multiple spaces, tabs
and typed returns. Maybe later versions of Word have the same item on
their "Edit" menu. In Word 97 I would eliminate multiple consecutive
spaces by typing "^w" (without quotes - "w" stands for "White space") in
the "Find What:" field of the "Replace" pop-up, and " " (a single space)
in the "Replace with:" field. For tabs entering "^t" in the "Find what:"
field should work (do this before "^w").

When there are typed returns within what I believe should be paragraphs
I replace the returns I want with an unusual character like a tilde (~)
or a pipe (|). I then use Word's "Replace" function to change typed
returns to a space, replace white space with a single space and THEN
replace my chosen unusual character with returns.