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Latex: Justify without hyphenation

May 20, 2009

As per others, one of the greatest power of latex is how it hyphenates. However, in my opinion its always better to have the text justified without any hyphenation. Atleast, its better for the readers (I received this comment from many of my readers). So, I am for the MS Word style justification rather than latex-style hyphenation.

I found two working ways of doing so:

  • You can use these lines in the preamble of your document (before \begin{document}):

    \tolerance=1
    \emergencystretch=\maxdimen
    \hyphenpenalty=10000
    \hbadness=10000

    This streches the lines and suppresses all the hyphenation. Works pretty well.

  • Or you can suppress hyphen character completely by using

    \hyphenchar\font=-1

    However, this has the problem of not justifying the lines, and as a result you will have zigzagged right edge of your document. To get rid of overfull boxes, use the command:

    \sloppy

56 Comments leave one →
  1. Rosalynne permalink
    September 20, 2009 1:04 pm

    Thank you! I used this in my thesis and it works well ;o)

  2. January 27, 2010 9:49 pm

    A wonderful juxtaposition of both the MS-Word and LaTeX styles is the use of the microtype package. The margin kerning is beautiful, and even though I allowed hyphenation with a much lower penalty, there were no mid-word breaks in my book. Hyphenated words were the only places that line breaks occurred for non-spaces, but the right margin and inter-word spacings looked better than anything I have ever seen. Reading the print produced this way was a pleasure, and easy on the eyes.

  3. Manuel permalink
    March 8, 2010 11:55 pm

    Thank you very much for posting this. It was very useful to me!

  4. santosh permalink
    November 6, 2010 5:10 am

    its very useful………..thank u so much:)

  5. Upananda Pani permalink
    December 17, 2010 6:48 pm

    Thanks man…your trick has saved me a lot of time…

  6. Anonymous permalink
    June 13, 2011 12:26 pm

    Brilliant !!! TY :)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

  7. Mohit permalink
    September 15, 2011 10:09 am

    Thanks a lot. Searched a lot for the same and your tweak just worked perfectly.

  8. September 26, 2011 12:34 am

    Thanks. It helps me a lot!!!
    Teguh Mesin ITS

  9. Sree permalink
    December 1, 2011 4:19 am

    Great post! Thank you very much!

  10. Whitney permalink
    December 5, 2011 6:06 pm

    Thanks, the first method works perfectly!

  11. K N Murugan permalink
    March 15, 2012 5:09 pm

    Thank you for your great assistance for latex justification without hyphenation.

  12. reza permalink
    April 26, 2012 12:35 pm

    dada, eta basic problem, and i have the solution from u .. lv u ๐Ÿ˜›

    • sumanta679 permalink*
      April 17, 2014 1:33 pm

      ei reza kon reza?? ๐Ÿ™‚

  13. Anonymous permalink
    May 3, 2012 6:34 am

    Than you so much! Works nicely for my dissertation.

  14. Anonymous permalink
    July 27, 2012 12:30 pm

    Thanks a lot. I found this very helpful.

  15. Anonymous permalink
    August 7, 2012 5:17 pm

    I also thank you ๐Ÿ™‚

  16. August 24, 2012 12:19 am

    Thank you very much. You saved my day….

  17. Anonymous permalink
    September 18, 2012 12:01 pm

    thank you.it works well…

  18. Elly permalink
    October 3, 2012 12:20 pm

    My friend and I tried to solve this problem for the whole day, and finally we saw the light at the end of the tunnel. We finally managed to solve the problem. TQVM

  19. Anonymous permalink
    October 17, 2012 6:42 pm

    amazing. thank you.

  20. Pablo permalink
    January 8, 2013 3:31 pm

    Thanks, it was helpful!!

  21. Anonymous permalink
    April 23, 2013 8:26 am

    great ๐Ÿ™‚

  22. Anonymous permalink
    April 23, 2013 8:27 am

    Thank you so much

  23. Yey permalink
    May 19, 2013 9:40 pm

    Thank you!!!!

  24. Anonymous permalink
    August 26, 2013 5:13 am

    Brilliant , Thanks!

  25. Anonymous permalink
    August 28, 2013 4:37 pm

    It does work! Thanks ๐Ÿ™‚

  26. Gabriel permalink
    November 25, 2013 1:28 pm

    waaoooooooh! simply and precise. The job is done. Thanks

  27. Anonymous permalink
    February 11, 2014 11:16 pm

    Thank you very much, it’s very helpful. And can you please explain the use of the command of the first kind? I’m trying to learn Latex.

    • sumanta679 permalink*
      April 17, 2014 1:35 pm

      Hi,
      The first set of commands work by first tolerating such things as non-aligned lines, and then stretching the lines to the maximum dimension of the page (for justification). And then it penalizes the use of hyphen character so that latex stops using it.

  28. Anonymous permalink
    March 6, 2014 10:15 pm

    Works Wonderfully. Thank you so much.

  29. March 20, 2014 8:24 am

    Wow … first solutions works well for me. Thanks for sharing.

  30. Anonymous permalink
    April 15, 2014 1:36 pm

    thank you!

  31. Anonymous permalink
    June 17, 2014 7:08 pm

    Mam, thank you very much for the solution. i nearly wasted 3 hrs before finding this solution. its very useful as it avoids hyphenation at the same time justification.

  32. Anonymous permalink
    July 29, 2014 1:03 am

    perfectttt…Thank you so much..

  33. sindu permalink
    December 30, 2014 3:39 pm

    thanx, it was really helpful for my thesis

  34. Prince permalink
    January 3, 2015 4:12 pm

    Thanks bro…. it is very useful to me……………….

  35. Anonymous permalink
    August 4, 2015 11:13 pm

    Thanks you! Very helpful.

  36. Anonymous permalink
    August 20, 2015 4:17 pm

    Very helpful – thanks!

  37. Nur permalink
    September 7, 2015 7:21 am

    cool

  38. EdResearch permalink
    September 14, 2015 8:55 pm

    Wow! Fantastic!

  39. Anonymous permalink
    January 7, 2016 3:20 pm

    I don’t understand why, but it works perfectly! Thanks a lot and keep up the good work!

  40. Anonymous permalink
    January 8, 2016 12:39 am

    Worked perfectly! Thank you so much and keep on doing what you’re good at ๐Ÿ™‚

  41. Anonymous permalink
    March 3, 2016 3:38 pm

    Thanks so much, saved my life

  42. Anonymous permalink
    April 27, 2016 10:04 am

    thanks a lot….

  43. Anonymous permalink
    April 28, 2016 9:22 pm

    Thank u so much

  44. Anonymous permalink
    June 3, 2016 3:08 am

    Thanks alot, It works well

  45. PUSHER permalink
    June 9, 2016 3:13 pm

    Thank you very much u r a genius

  46. Anonymous permalink
    July 26, 2016 2:19 am

    Thank you so much, you are amazing ๐Ÿ™‚

  47. Anonymous permalink
    July 27, 2016 2:03 pm

    Thanks a bunch! Works like a maze!

  48. Anonymous permalink
    November 29, 2016 11:13 pm

    THANK YOU SO MUCHH!!!!

  49. March 9, 2017 11:23 am

    Thank you so much for this.It has really assisted me.What does \hyphenpenalty=10000 mean?

  50. Raghavendra Prasad permalink
    March 16, 2017 8:10 am

    Works Wonderfully. Thank you so much.

  51. Anonymous permalink
    November 30, 2017 9:45 am

    Amazing! Thank you for this! After so plugging-in the right keywords in Google on what I am looking for, I finally bump into this post. Thanks a lot!

  52. October 17, 2018 4:58 pm

    You are the Best. Thanks a lot

  53. Anonymous permalink
    September 4, 2019 7:14 am

    Thank you…

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