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Justification & Hyphenation

Justified text and clean hyphenation are what make a page look professionally typeset: even margins on both sides, no gappy lines, no awkward word breaks. The Justification & Hyphenation panel controls both, for your ebook and your print PDF, from one place. You’ll find it under Edit Styles in the Paragraph Styling group (it’s also in Print Settings under Typography & Layout; both open the same panel).

One Panel, Both Formats

At the top of the panel, Apply to both formats (“Use the same settings for eBook and Print”) is on by default: you see one All Formats tab, and every change applies to your EPUB and your print PDF together. That’s the right choice for most books.

Turn the toggle off and the panel splits into eBook and Print tabs with independent settings, for when you want, say, hyphenation on in print but off in the reflowable ebook.

Alignment

  • Justify body text. Align text to both left and right margins for a clean, even look. On by default; turn it off for ragged-right text.

Hyphenation

  • Enable automatic hyphenation. Break words at line endings so justified text doesn’t develop wide gaps between words. On by default. When it’s off, the rules below disappear.

How Lacuna decides where a word breaks

Hyphenation isn’t guesswork; it follows language-specific pattern rules, the same approach professional typesetting systems use. That means your book’s language setting drives your hyphenation. Set it in book metadata: English (U.S.) and English (GB) genuinely split words differently. American patterns break “rec-og-nize” and “bro-ken”; British patterns break “re-cog-nize” and leave “broken” whole.

Hyphenation Rules

  • Hyphenate capitalized words. Whether names and other capitalized words may break. Off by default, since a broken name reads poorly.
  • Hyphenate last word. Whether the final word of a paragraph may break. Off by default, so a lonely word fragment never sits on a paragraph’s last line.
  • Keep hyphenated words on one page. Prevents a word from splitting across a page break, so a reader never turns the page mid-word.
  • Max consecutive lines. How many lines in a row may end with a hyphen, from 1 to 5 (default 2). Typesetters call stacked hyphens a “ladder”; lower this if you see one.

Word Splitting

  • Minimum word length. The shortest word that may be hyphenated at all, from 4 to 10 characters (default 6). Keeps short words like “also” whole.
  • Min. letters before break. How many letters must stay before the hyphen, 1 to 5 (default 2). Prevents fragments like “a-” ending a line.
  • Min. letters after break. How many letters must carry to the next line, 1 to 5 (default 3). Prevents fragments like “-ly” starting one.

When One Word Still Breaks Wrong

Patterns handle real words well, but character names, invented words, and technical terms can fool them. For those, teach Lacuna the exact break points with the Hyphenation Dictionary: choose Edit > Hyphenation Dictionary….

  • Add word and type the word (Henderson) and its break pattern (Hender-son), with hyphens marking the allowed break points. Lacuna suggests a pattern automatically when you leave the word field.
  • Or turn on Never hyphenate this word to forbid breaks entirely, the right choice for short names and brand names.
  • Each entry has its own Language, defaulting to your book’s language.
  • Entries are stored on your computer and apply to every project, so you only teach Lacuna a word once. The export button in the toolbar saves the whole dictionary to a file you can carry to another machine.

What’s Next

  • Set your book’s Language in book metadata; it selects the hyphenation patterns everything above builds on.
  • Check real line breaks in the print preview with Print - Whole Book (Slower).
  • Cleaning up quotation marks too? See smart quotes.