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I have this problem on of my paragraphs in my document. There is a large blank space in between the first and the second word in the paragraph. Here is the code:

\documentclass[12pt, twocolumn, english]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage[margin=2.0cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{hyphenat}

\pretolerance=10000
\tolerance=2000 
\emergencystretch=10pt

\begin{document}
\subsection{Haptic Devices}
\paragraph{}
Haptic interfaces are devices that uses the modality of touch for input and        output in interaction. These devices provide better immersion and presence in    virtual environments\cite{Tsalamal}, but also bridges issues of use when other sensory modalities are unavailable, such as vision for the blind\cite{Sjostrom}. Haptic devices that are either attached, or with limited or no direct contact are currently being explored \cite{Tsalamal}. Devices that are attached or provide limited contact allow more freedom but limited force rendering. A number of non-contact devices have promising, but share the issue of some of the limited-contact devices which is the restricted workspace\cite{Tsalamal}. 
\end{document}

With this code the output looks like this:

enter image description here

As you can see there is a large gap between the first and the second word. Does anyone know how to prevent this from happening?

martin36
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    It may comes from the \pretolerance=10000. Try to comment it. – Jérôme Dequeker Jan 13 '17 at 13:15
  • When I commented it out the large space disappears, but I wanted to use \pretolerance=10000 to remove the hyphenations from the text. – martin36 Jan 13 '17 at 13:18
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    And why do you want to suppress all hyphenation operations? – Mico Jan 13 '17 at 13:20
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    Try \usepackage[none]{hyphenat} to suppress hypenations. – Jérôme Dequeker Jan 13 '17 at 13:21
  • In my opinion it looks better without them – martin36 Jan 13 '17 at 13:21
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    I suggest that you keep the hyphenation, but load the package microtype instead. You will then reduce the numbers of hyphenation to a minimum, unless you write a lot of log words. Big, white spaces in the text is ugly, and reduce the readability of your text. If you insist not to use hyphenation, you should set your text ragged right. – Sveinung Jan 13 '17 at 13:35
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    More often than not, good typography is about striking a balance between conflicting criteria for what may 'look good'. The preference ordering you impose -- "[I don't want hyphens because] in my opinion [the text] looks better without them" -- precludes any kind of balance. If you absolutely don't want hyphens, you have to accept that other typographic problems will show up, e.g., large and highly distracting inter-word gaps. Eventually, you will come to the conclusion that disallowing all hyphenation is not better after all. – Mico Jan 13 '17 at 13:41
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    do you really have to avoid hyphenation????, especially in a two column document that will mean that ugly white spaces are inevitable. It's going against several hundred years of typographic practice to say that over stretched spaces are better than the occasional hyphenated word. – David Carlisle Jan 13 '17 at 14:20
  • @DavidCarlisle If there would be a way to just hyphenate certain words, for example if the words were longer than 8 characters and that at least half the word were on one side of the hyphenation then I would want to have them in my text. But when words with 4 character gets hyphenated with 2 characters on each side (which there is a lot of examples of in my current document) then I prefer not to have them in the document. – martin36 Jan 13 '17 at 14:25
  • you can specify the minimum amount of characters to left and right of the break (which are 2 and 3 in the default english patterns so a 4-letter word will not break) (\lefthyphenmin=6 would make it 6) – David Carlisle Jan 13 '17 at 14:27
  • I did not know that. Thank you! I will try it out. – martin36 Jan 13 '17 at 14:29
  • but as I say if you are typing in English and 4-letter words are breaking then something is wrong with your setup – David Carlisle Jan 13 '17 at 14:29
  • I tried adding \lefthyphenmin=6 to the document, but it still breaks a word after 2 characters. – martin36 Jan 13 '17 at 14:35

1 Answers1

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Delete \pretolerance=10000 and \tolerance=2000, and to suppress hyphenation to the entire document, use \usepackage[none]{hyphenat} (see this question: How to prevent LaTeX from hyphenating the entire document?).

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