Justification in Google Drive / Docs Tutorial

Are you looking to find out how to “justify” your text in Google Docs? The tutorial below will help you to achieve just that!

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What is Justified Text?

Justification in this sense, means that every line is the same width. Justified blocks of text appear to have a straight line down the right-hand side as well as the left hand side. So, each line starts and finishes at precisely the same point.

This is achieved in a couple of ways: by increasing the spaces between words, the spaces between letters, in order to achieve the style.

Justifying Text Using Google Docs

Google Docs in Google Drive, (Google’s word processor, available to Google Apps users in the cloud, for free, or included in an Apps subscription) allows you to justify either your whole document, or a single paragraph or block of text.

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To Justify All Text in Google Docs

To achieve justified text, you will want to click the button which looks like 5 parallel lines and type your text.

To Justify One Paragraph in Google Docs

To justify a paragraph or block of text, simply highlight the text you’d like to appear justified, then click that symbol.

Where’s the Button??

That symbol looks like this in Google docs – just push the button!

 

Shortcuts & Hotkeys?

Is there an even faster way? Yes! The shortcut keys (on windows machines) are pressing the following at the same time:

  • Ctrl + Shift + J

If you do this while a block of text is justified, it will justify only that text. If you do it with the cursor sitting flashing, all text you type afterwards shall be justified.

You can find the full list of keyboard shortcuts for Google Docs here.

Leave a comment below if you have further questions.

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13 thoughts on “Justification in Google Drive / Docs Tutorial”

  1. I’m trying to write a script for my theatre class, and this isn’t working. Whenever I try to make the dialogue left justified, it makes the entire script justified

    Reply
  2. After downloading the google add on to show non-characters my text was justyfied by separating even words! How can this be changed so the words are together again and the text body is justified?

    Reply
    • Press the button two to the left of the one indicated in this article to left align text (all straight down the left hand side). You will need to highlight the text to which you wish this to apply before pressing.

      Reply
  3. How do I use Justified alignment while single spacing, but I need to skip some lines. Therefore I have to hit return. When I do that, the justification goes away.

    Reply

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