Formatting question

Do you have large gaps? I justify my books, but don't have any large gaps between words. Sometimes you can get gaps if you are hitting shift and enter rather than just enter. It shows up on the screen as a little arrow and will misalign the text and spread it out across the entire line.

ambermg said:

I need some help.
For my first self-published book I paid for the formatting services, but for the sequel I have been using the template provided by Createspace. I've been able to figure everything out and it looks great. The only issue I'm having is justifying it but having even spacing. Anyone know a trick to this?
Thanks!

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You didn't say what software you're using to layout the book. I'll assume Word, since a lot of self-pubbers do it that way. You can get better justification if you let Word break and hyphenate words automatically. I have Word 2002, and these procedures might vary among versions, but here's how to do it.

1. Set your paragraph style(s) to Justify
2. From the Tools menu, choose Language and then Hyphenation. That opens the Hyphenation dialog box.
3. Turn on "Automatically hyphenate document."
4. You can play with the two values. I use .01" and 2, which seem to work okay.
5. Click OK.

Look over your document to make sure Word has made good choices. Sometimes it doesn't. Just look for hyphens at the right margin. Use the Manual procedure in the Hypthenation dialog box to override Word's choice for a particular word or to hyphenate one that Word has skipped.

If you crave perfection, you'll need a professional layout program, such as InDesign or QuarkXPress. That gets costly. I have an old version (4.1) of QX, and it does a nice job. Steep learning curve, though.

Sometimes you have to edit to change "rivers" (where the white spaces 'flow' on a page.). Depending on the size of your book, and whether you turn on hyphenation or not, long words can throw things off for justification.