Some folks love justified text in their documents and others just love that ragged edge. Many law firms use justified text for their documents. There is something about that nice, clean look of everything lining up that appeals to people. And there is also that group of people who resort to using the ragged edge in their documents because they have had problems using justified text in MS Word.
And for all you WordPerfect lovers, yes, it seems that they got this feature right! I love the MS Office Suite but I will concede the point on this topic. Even Microsoft apparently concedes the point as you will see below!
Have you every had that rogue document where your text simply will not behave? You know the one – it looks something like this:
The Defendant respectfully requests and for reasons
No lawyer is going to let a document leave the office looking like this. Every law office says “there is no such thing as a final draft, just the one that goes out the door,” but this would never do and it always seems to happen when you are under a time constraint because well, yes, lawyers do tend to wait until the last possible second to get things done. I can hear all you legal assistants agreeing with me as you read this!
The good news is that you can now make that errant justification work for you in the latest versions of MS Word (2007/2010).
Follow the steps below to learn how:
- In version 2007, click the Office button and Word Options.
- In version 2010, on the File tab, just to the left of the Home tab, click Options.
- Click on Advanced.
- Now scroll down ntil you see Compatibility Options and click the plus sign next to Layout Options to expand it.
- Select Do full justification the way WordPerfect 6.x for Windows does.
This changes the full justification scheme for the current document only. Should you want to change it for all future new documents, use the drop-down at the top of Compatibility Options and select All New Documents.
Problem solved!