Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Understanding Paragraph Alignment.

Understanding Paragraph Alignment

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 22, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365


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One of the fundamental typographic specifications for laying out paragraphs is determining how they will appear in relation to the left and right margins. Word refers to this specification as alignment. There are four types of paragraph alignment you can set within Word:

  • Left-aligned. All lines in the paragraph butt up against the left text margin. No extra spaces are added to the line. The text of each line does not line up with the right margin, so traditional typesetting terminology often refers to left-aligned text as ragged right.
  • Center-aligned. All lines in a paragraph are centered between the left and right text margins. No extra spaces are added to the line. The text lines up with neither the left nor right margins.
  • Right-aligned. All lines in a paragraph butt up against the right text margin. No extra spaces are added to the line. The text of each line does not line up with the left margin, so traditional typesetting terminology often refers to right-aligned text as ragged left.
  • Justified. All lines in a paragraph are expanded so they butt up against both the left and right text margins. Space is added, between words and characters, as necessary to fill out the line. In some typesetting references justified text is also referred to as "full justified."

You can change the alignment of any paragraph by using the appropriate tools on the Home tab of the ribbon or by displaying the Paragraph dialog box.

There is also an undocumented alignment for paragraphs called "distributed text justification." This alignment is very similar to Justified alignment, except it also forces the last line of the paragraph—regardless of how short it is—to be stretched all the way to the right margin. You can only access this alignment type by placing the insertion point within the paragraph and pressing Ctrl+Shift+J.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13051) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Understanding Paragraph Alignment.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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Comments

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What is nine minus 9?

2021-05-24 11:18:40

Andrew

Distributed text justification is not quite undocumented. For example, it is documented at
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/Word.WdParagraphAlignment
as
wdAlignParagraphDistribute 4 Paragraph characters are distributed to fill the entire width of the paragraph.
and is available through VBA via macros and such.

What I find interesting are the other "full" justification settings:
wdAlignParagraphJustify 3 Fully justified.
wdAlignParagraphJustifyHi 7 Justified with a high character compression ratio.
wdAlignParagraphJustifyLow 8 Justified with a low character compression ratio.
wdAlignParagraphJustifyMed 5 Justified with a medium character compression ratio.

Brief experimentation shows a "higher" compression ratio gives wider (looser ) results, with "Low" character compression being about the same as "Fully justified." and "high" being the loosest .

Andy.


2021-05-22 11:56:33

mark a sippel

"You can change the alignment of any paragraph by using the appropriate tools on the Home tab of the ribbon or by displaying the Paragraph dialog box."
I do not mean to sound harsh here. I am a lawyer inside word perfect I have to use word some to survive other's stuff, and some of theirs makes little sense to me. '

For those (like me) who are not gurus, this makes little sense. This is what you should have talked about. It is like, "you gotta know this to learn this to know." By the time I actually get to know this, it's value is shot.

And that ruler line with the box and up and down thingie and tabs vs using a "left line indent" and that this is by default only a paragraph at a time and I want it to stick. and does this work in the block indent temporary left margin?


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