English writer, justified alignment, words crazily split between lines

axylus · August 9, 2024, 11:55am

Version: 24.2.5.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: bffef4ea93e59bebbeaf7f431bb02b1a39ee8a59
CPU threads: 8; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 22631; UI render: default; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded
Windows 11, Version 23H2, OS Build 22631.3880
LibreOffice Writer
Paragraphs set as “justified” produce unacceptable, crazily split words, such as below, see broken words “was” and (GPA):

Susan studied  hard every day  because her goal in life wa
s to get into medical school. Her grade point average (GPA
) was 4.0 every year in high school and undergrad classes.

ajlittoz · August 9, 2024, 12:27pm

We can’t tell simply with this sample. Attach the original document so that can examine all settings.

axylus · August 9, 2024, 1:01pm

Sorry, it’s unpublished research. However, I did this and it fixed the problem: 1) Copy all the text 2) Paste the text into a Notepad document (without word wrap). 3) Select All and paste that text back into the still-selected area of the LibreOffice document, using Paste Special → Unformatted Text. But this seems like a kluge.

ajlittoz · August 9, 2024, 1:33pm

Is your document a .docx or an .odt? If you don’t work in native format, expect any number of glitches like this one.

fpy · August 9, 2024, 1:53pm

also common from anything going through the system clipboard …

keme1 · August 9, 2024, 2:34pm

It would be interesting to know whether it behaved erratically also with left aligned or centered text, or whether this is specifically a full justification issue.

What springs to mind is that your spaces may be non breaking spaces. However, without a sample this remains a guess.

More importantly, you rectified the issue and posted a full explanation. Thank you for that! You should be able to tick off your own comment as the solution.