Question on justifying text (Pages)

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Question on justifying text (Pages)

Can't find this through manual or help screen. When Pages alligns or justifies the text (again both left and right margins), does it simply 'stretch" the letters and characters as MS Word does, or does it really do it "professionally" as in the usual layout programs?

Normally as a publisher, I pay someone to lay out my books in Quark or InDesign, but I'm doing a 90-100 7" x 9" book (or booklet). I thought it would be half the size, but I've done it in Word, including photos with shadows, scans of old newspapers, etc. However, I did not create any styles. I have the text as 'ragged right', but it certainly would look better justified. I have to reformat as text line length is too long.

So, I'm looking at putting it into Pages, but I'd like to know more about the allignment or justifying text question first.

My previous experience with Pages is doing a family Christmas letter with a preformatted template. I may be using more 'blank' pages with this.

Thanks for any advice.

Pam

PS I read earlier posts in the discussions about problems with shadow photos and I don't want to run into those problems to fix if I switch.

iMac Mac OS X (10.4.10) Mac user 20 years

iMac Mac OS X (10.4.10) Mac user 20 years

Posted on Jun 25, 2007 9:35 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 25, 2007 10:25 AM in response to Pamela41

An easy way to see what happens is to create a document with really big letters with a text like "hey you there" and see how the applications handle the linebreak as the characters get too big.

As far as I can tell MS Word is really rudimentary, just widening the blanks between the words. Pages stretches the words alright. And then you can fine tune with character spacing in the Inspector.

InDesign gives much more options of course if you need it.

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