Tony Smith wrote:

>>>> <http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/software/page4765.cfm>
>>  
>>> That last article is actually on Word, and has a few biases & errors.
>>> Right at the beginning is this quote: 
>>> 
>>> "Writer consistently allows more control, offering settings for
>>> hyphenation, automatic page breaks, and the last line in a fully
>>> justified paragraph." 
>>> 
>>> ...which is bollocks. I'm not sure what a "fully justified paragraph"
>>> actually is [...]
>> 
>> First shoot, then ask, hm? :)
>> 
>>> [...] but if he's talking widow/orphan control, he's wrong.
>> 
>> Apparently he's not talking about widow/orphan control, because that
>> has nothing to do with left/right/fully justified or centered (which
>> are the four common justification formats). 
>> 
>> Writer allows to define how the last line of a fully justified
>> paragraph should be aligned. In Word, it's left justified, but there is
>> not much that justifies this assumption: a fully justified paragraph is
>> at the same time left justified, right justified and centered. The last
>> line may have to be any of the three -- and Writer conveniently
>> provides these three choices.
> 
> Yep, see other comment.  Should have Googled it first like everyone
> else, I suppose.  I got distracted by the missing-but-actually-there
> options. 
> 
> Anyway, if you think about it, it's a useless option.  

I don't follow you here. (Maybe you think about it? :)

A paragraph can basically be left aligned (all lines have the same left end
and the right end varies), right aligned (all lines have the same right end
and the left end varies) or centered (the distances of left and right ends
to a straight vertical line left and right are the same). 

Now when you justify a paragraph -- that is, you make left and right ends a
straight vertical line --, you basically still maintain the quality of
left, right or center, it just is visible only in the last line. It's just
that Word doesn't do this -- all justified paragraphs in Word are
underneath left-aligned --, and so all who grew up with Word don't know it
otherwise.

> Right align is pointless (yuk), and forcing either left or justify (by a
> style) is pointless too.  To be useful, you'd have to set it for each
> individual paragraph, and life's too short for that. 

You must be talking about something else. Giving a justified paragraph a
right-aligned or centered last partial line is just as valid as giving it a
left-aligned last partial line -- it's just less "Wordy"... 

Gerhard

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