Justified text thesis: check hyphenation before printing

When a justified text thesis is required

Whether the page is ragged right or justified belongs in the written regulations. Some German departments require justification for the body, the footnotes and the reference list. Others want a straight left edge and an uneven right edge. Do not copy the look of a classmate’s file.

Citation style and page layout are separate instructions. APA Style tells you to align an APA student paper to the left margin, leave the right margin ragged and not use full justification. A department in Germany can still ask for APA citations and, in the same guide, require justified text, different margins or 1.5 line spacing. Follow the guide that governs your submission.

One concrete example of the other rule is the June 2026 guide by Prof. Dr. Inga Dehmel at Harz University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Business Studies. It requires justified text for the main text, footnotes and reference lists. Automatic hyphenation in Word is allowed there, but each break has to be checked by hand. That is one professorship’s rule. Do not copy its margin measurements into your own thesis.

Set hyphenation in Word

These steps follow Microsoft’s description of Word for Windows. On a Mac, open Hyphenation from the Tools menu. The box there is called “Limit consecutive hyphens to”, not “Limit consecutive hyphens”. Word in the browser is not in that help article. Export the print file from the desktop app.

On the Home tab, in the Paragraph group, select Justify. Apply it to the Normal style rather than to one line at a time. Spaces, tabs and manual line breaks are not alignment. They move as soon as you edit a sentence.

• On the Layout tab, click the arrow next to Hyphenation and select Automatic.
• Select Hyphenation Options and type a maximum in the Limit consecutive hyphens box. Microsoft does not prescribe the number.
• Read one full page. If almost every line ends with a hyphen, lower the limit. If long words leave wide gaps, raise the limit or hyphenate those words manually.
• Select headings, the cover lines and centred text. On the Home tab, open the Paragraph dialog, then Line and Page Breaks, and tick Don’t hyphenate. Save that exception in the Heading 1 to 3 styles.

Microsoft also says you can change the margin width to get fewer hyphens. For a thesis, the margins are already spoken for. The binding gutter has to leave room for the spine. Narrowing the text block only to avoid hyphens can break the department’s measurements.

Close large gaps in justified text

Wide gaps are the real problem with justification, not the straight right edge. Word spreads the leftover space across the spaces already in the line. Do not fill those holes with extra space characters.

Example: A line contains only “The interviews took place in the”. The word “operationalisation” does not fit and drops entirely to the next line, so the short words are pulled apart. Open Layout, Hyphenation, Manual, and accept a break only if you would also accept it in a dictionary. If you are unsure, leave the word whole and tolerate a looser line.

An optional hyphen in Word appears only when the word actually breaks at the end of a line. The manual hyphenation dialog inserts that kind of break. A hyphen typed from the keyboard stays visible. If the paragraph is later edited and the word moves to the middle of a line, the typed hyphen is still sitting inside the word. Turn optional hyphens on under File, Options, Display and check a sample paragraph: no hyphen should show in the middle of a line.

For a number or a name that must not break, insert a nonbreaking hyphen from Insert, Symbol, More Symbols, Special Characters. The hyphenation help also lists Ctrl+Shift+Hyphen on Windows. The keep-text page calls that key Minus Sign. It means the key that types the hyphen, not the minus key on the numeric keypad. On a Mac the shortcut is Command+Shift+Hyphen. After you insert it, the hyphen should stay visible even when the word sits in the middle of a line.

Do not repair a long DOI or URL by typing an extra hyphen. A character you add becomes part of the address. The Harz guide says the same about web addresses: break them at a sensible point, without adding a hyphen. A slightly loose line is better than a link that no longer opens.

Check hyphenation in the PDF

The print file is the PDF, not the Word window. Export with Word’s PDF command and open the file in a PDF reader. Walk through the cover, a page of long words, a heading near the bottom of a page, the reference list and a page that contains URLs.

Look for three faults: a hyphen left in the middle of a word, several lines in a row that all end with a hyphen, and a gap almost wide enough for another word. If the breaks differ from Word, check whether the fonts are embedded. A substituted font changes the width of every word and therefore every break.

A heading stranded at the bottom of a page is a different fault from hyphenation. Fix it with the paragraph controls described in the guide to Word page breaks. Update the table of contents and cross-references afterwards, then export again. The export routes from Word, Google Docs and LaTeX are not interchangeable. Check a Docs or LaTeX PDF even when the editor looked even.

In LaTeX, hyphenation follows the document language. Overleaf explains that babel activates the hyphenation patterns of the language you select. If the language is English, English patterns are applied even to German words. Load babel or, with LuaLaTeX and XeLaTeX, polyglossia for the language of the body text, and check technical terms the patterns do not know. The route to a print-ready file is covered in the guide to writing a thesis in LaTeX and Overleaf.

Only the PDF you upload is the print master. A bad break stays in the bound copy. Which binding is allowed is, again, a department rule. The thesis printing page lists the bindings you can order. It does not replace the regulations.

Frequently asked questions