Lesson 4: Assignment

Text Alignment

1. Create multiple layouts.
   Using your page layout software of choice create a document with 4 pages. Use the same side margins throughout. On three of the pages set up text columns. Each set of columns should be different.
   • On page 2 set up two text columns of even width with a default gutter between columns.
   • On page 3 set up two text columns as well make the columns slightly more narrow with a wider gutter in between.
   • On page 4 set up three text columns. These will be narrower than the text columns on pages 2 or 3.
   
   
   
2. Add text to your layouts.
   For this exercise you can use the lorem ipsum placeholder text or any other large amount of text you want. Import or place this text on to your page in two sections. Put a section at the top of the page and a section in the bottom half of the page. Format the text using the font of your choice at the size you want. Each page can be different but use the same font for both sections of each page.
   
   
3. Align your text.
   Select all the text in the top half of each page and set the alignment to fully-justified. Don’t use forced justification. Select all the text in the bottom half of each page set the alignment to ragged right, also known as left-aligned. Use the default settings of your software at this point.
   
   
4. Fine-tune your text alignment.
   Working with one page at a time, fine-tune the alignment of each block of text.
   • Turn on hyphenation and adjust the hyphenation zone.
   • Make fine adjustments to the word and character spacing as necessary.
   • Make small adjustments to the font size of all the text in one section if you are having trouble making it look good.
   Your goal is to eliminate rivers of white space in your fully-justified text and achieve evenness. You don’t want one line of text to be spaced out or scrunched up obviously more than other lines of text. For your ragged right aligned text you want to have fairly even line endings. In both cases, make sure you don’t have excessive hyphenation. Adjust the hyphenation zone individually for each block of text. The font size and column width will affect the appearance of your hyphenation.

Want to share your alignment efforts with the rest of us? Log into the DTP Classroom and attach a screen shot or a PDF of your pages. Tell us what you think and describe the techniques you used to achieve attractive ragged right line endings or evenly spaced full justification.

The next lesson in this series looks at another commonly used text alignment — centered text. Discover when it is and isn’t appropriate.

^{Found this page by accident? This is one of 12 lessons delivered as part of the Rules of Desktop Publishing free email class.}

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