The Complete Manual of Typography: A Guide to Setting Perfect Type, Second Edition

chapter 10 Controlling Hyphenation and Justification

Hyphenation and justification—H&J, for short—is the process a computer

program uses to fit type into lines. Even the humblest word processor does

some form of H&J, which specifies how the words and letters on each typeset

line will be spaced. One of the quality benchmarks for a typesetting program

is the amount of control it gives you over this process. Although most page

layout programs provide fairly sophisticated H&J settings, research by the

manufacturers reveals that the great majority of their customers never avail

themselves of these settings—they just ride along using the defaults that ...