How can I remove empty spaces between stretched characters (words) when they are separated in two equally sized columns? (SOLVED)

Hi,

What i want to do:

I want to transcribe the Old and New Testament of the Bible so that i can have them as one document (book) as opposed them being contained into three separate books (two for the OT and one for the NT) written by two different authors.

Where I’m stuck:

The one thing that is driving me crazy is that i can’t get rid of the empty spaces between stretched characters (words) in a paragraph that are using the “Justified” function.

Here’s my document in question.

My custom Bible NEW.odt

Thank you for your time and help.

This is a recurring issue with narrow columns. It is less critical when you have wider columns because you can stuff more words in a line and excess space can be spread more smoothly between words.

The only solution I see to mitigate the problem is to allow hyphenation.

Unfortunately your document (only this sample I hope) is totally direct formatted: everything is Default Paragraph Style and every emphasis (bold, font face, etc.) is manually applied. You won’t go far before being confronted to formatting dead ends.

Learn how to use styles. Read the Writer Guide for an introduction. Practice on scratch documents before tackling your goal.

Enabling hyphenation is done in the Text Flow tab of the style definition.

Presently, if you do it on Default Paragraph Style, it will be enabled for all your document, including locations where it should not. This is so because everything (except the header) is assigned the same paragraph style. Bulk discourse should be styled Text Body. Headings should receive Heading n depending on the level of the heading. There are many others and you can define your own (for comment, note, remark, … paragraphs).

Intra-paragraph formatting is done with character styles (such as Strong Emphasis for bold, Emphasis for italics) instead of applying manually the attribute (I know, Word does it this way because it does not know about styles and their semantics).

To show the community your question has been answered, click the ✓ next to the correct answer, and “upvote” by clicking on the ^ arrow of any helpful answers. These are the mechanisms for communicating the quality of the Q&A on this site. Thanks!

In case you need clarification, edit your question (not an answer which is reserved for solutions) or comment the relevant answer.

Hi,

Thank you for your response.

Yes its only this sample as i didn’t want to go any further while have the issue that i have.

I see, what you say makes sense to me now.

No wonder i was confused.

I will follow all your suggestions/advice to the letter.

Thank you for taking the time to help me, it is much appreciated!

This is an add-on to @ajlittoz’s answer, which you should read carefully.

You should use a font with a narrow character width when you want your text in narrow columns. Times New Roman, Georgia and Liberation Serif at 13 pt manage to get the entire text of Genesis 1:1-8 in the left column, with Noto Serif CJK JP it wraps to the second column. It pays to play with the fonts on your system, but you should make the changes in the paragraph styles, so that they will take effect on the entire text, not just on a selection. That way you don’t clog your document with direct formatting, which always messes up your formatting, and you can easily see the effect of a font face and size on a larger part of your document.

Hi,

Thank you for your response!

I understand i will do as you suggest.

Thank you for taking the time to help me, it is much appreciated!