40

How to avoid using \sloppy document-wide to fix overfull \hbox problems?

overfull \hbox

This is my minimal working example.

\documentclass[12pt]{report}
 \usepackage[english,ngerman]{babel}
 \usepackage[a4paper,inner=25mm,outer=25mm,top=30mm,bottom=30mm]{geometry}
 \usepackage{lipsum}

 \begin{document}
  \lipsum[2]
  Have a look at this URL ignoring the page margin within the text flow \textit{example.com/donc\_oe/longurl} lorem ipsum.\par
  The very strange plugin Java-JDT (\textit{en. Java Development Toolkit}) "`Plugin-Entwicklungsumgebung"' -- what's wrong with this german word?\par
  \lipsum[2]
 \end{document}

With \sloppy it looks better.

enter image description here

But I got told it's (obviously) better to avoid using it document-wide. What else can I do?

Community
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q9f
  • 1,995
  • 3
    For the first one, you could use \url from the url package. – Gonzalo Medina Jun 08 '12 at 21:21
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    You should be saying \usepackage[ngerman]{babel}; so input the offending long word as Plugin"-Entwicklungsumgebung, using the "- shorthand: a hyphen allowing hyphenation in the rest of the word. – egreg Jun 08 '12 at 21:41
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    Nobody suggests microtype? That won't help you there but it is always good to consider when typing text – topskip Jun 08 '12 at 22:06
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    The word "Plugin-Entwicklungsumgebung" should be written as Plugin"=Entwicklungsumgebung – topskip Jun 08 '12 at 22:27
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    Contrarian question: how do I enable \sloppy throughout the whole document? – shuhalo Aug 18 '23 at 21:34

3 Answers3

34

Also, you might want to set

\setlength{\emergencystretch}{2pt}

or something similar. Explanation: if TeX can't typeset a paragraph without bad boxes, and \emergencystretch is nonzero, it tries once again, but this time increasing the stretchability of the space by the value of this parameter.

mbork
  • 13,385
30

another tactic, after fixing urls as described by Werner, is to wrap the environment \begin{sloppypar} ... \end{sloppypar} around just those paragraphs that still have problems.

this does much the same thing as setting \emergencystretch, with preset values.

barbara beeton
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    \begin{sloppypar} uses \sloppy locally and is documented here: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/50850/1340—that answer recommends considering emergencystretch over sloppy, as the former does not allow small overfull hboxes. – Blaisorblade Aug 27 '17 at 09:13
18

  • When typesetting URLs, use the url package, since it provides adequate line-breaking support. If needed, you can change the typeface it uses in its display (default is \ttfamily).

  • Words not covered by default hyphenation (or that provided by babel can be incorporated in an ad-hoc way using \- or globally using \hypenation{<this-is-an-awk-ward-ly-long-word>}.

enter image description here

\documentclass[12pt]{report}
\usepackage[english,ngerman]{babel}% http://ctan.org/pkg/babel
\usepackage[a4paper,inner=25mm,outer=25mm,top=30mm,bottom=30mm]{geometry}% http://ctan.org/pkg/geometry
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
\usepackage{url}% http://ctan.org/pkg/url
\begin{document}
\lipsum[2]
Have a look at this URL ignoring the page margin within the text flow \url{example.com/donc_oe/longurl} lorem ipsum.\par
The very strange plugin Java-JDT (\textit{en. Java Development Toolkit}) "`Plugin-Ent\-wick\-lungs\-umge\-bung"' -- what's wrong with this German word?\par
\lipsum[2]
\end{document}
Werner
  • 603,163
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    If you write Plugin"=Entwicklungsumgebung the second problem should go away by itself. It is always good to write "= instead of - on long German words with -. – topskip Jun 08 '12 at 22:32