Justify text in moderncv cover letter

Question

I am writing a cover letter and CV using moderncv. Everything works fine so far, but the text in the cover letter is not justified. I think it is good that it is not hyphenated, but it would look much nicer if the text was justified.

Here is a minimal example:

\documentclass{moderncv}
\moderncvstyle{classic}

\usepackage{lipsum} % just for dummy text

\firstname{John}
\familyname{Doe}

\begin{document}
\recipient{Prof.\ Dr.\ Foo Bar}{}
\opening{Dear Professor Dr.\ Bar,}
\closing{Yours sincerely,}
\enclosure[Attached]{curriculum vit\ae}

\makelettertitle
\lipsum[1]
\makeletterclosing

\clearpage

\makecvtitle

\section{Education}
\cventry{2009--present}{PhD Student}{here}{and}{there}{}
\end{document}

output

Werner · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-16T19:06:24.677

59

Add the following to your document preamble, after loading the moderncv style (classic):

\usepackage{etoolbox}% http://ctan.org/pkg/etoolbox
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\makeletterhead}% <cmd>
  {\raggedright \@opening}% <search>
  {\@opening}% <replace>
  {}{}% <success><failure>
\makeatother

output

The above patch just removes the necessary \raggedright from the template at the correct location (just before calling \@opening).

edited Aug 16 '15 at 19:06

answered Oct 09 '12 at 17:04

Werner

603,163

@Werner Works great. But that resulted many hyphenation in my text. Is there any way to fully justify (like in word processors) ??? – TheKojuEffect Oct 05 '13 at 02:58
1

@TheKojuEffect: Try adding \makeatletter\\hyphenpenalty=\@M\makeatletter to your document preamble. This should assign an large enough (infinite) penalty to automatically hyphenate any words at a line break, effectively removing the ability to hyphenate in the document. For more on penalties, see What are penalties and which ones are defined? If this doesn't work, see How to prevent LaTeX from hyphenating the entire document? – Werner Oct 05 '13 at 03:45

score 31 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 23 '14 at 09:25

31

You can simply include:

\usepackage{ragged2e}

and right after \makelettertitle put:

\justify

Works fine for me both with classic and with casual.

edited Oct 23 '14 at 09:25

answered Oct 23 '14 at 09:06

electrique

502
4
7

1

I believe this is the simplest answer here. Thanks! – Gabriel Feb 08 '17 at 15:28
4

This seems to insert an extra newline after \makelettertitle. – Szabolcs Dec 29 '17 at 15:05

score 17 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 14 '13 at 13:07

17

Just fix the "bug" in moderncv templates. If you use banking style, go to moderncvstylebanking.sty and change

% opening
\raggedright%
\@opening\\[1.5em]%

into

% opening
{\raggedright%
\@opening\\[1.5em]}%

Note that this simply enclose the raggedright command, so it won't affect the entire document from this point onwards. You can do the same for each of the other styles.

answered Aug 14 '13 at 13:07

emem

352
2
9

1

Even if Wener's answer works, I believe this is a better, perhaps correct, way of doing it. – BRabbit27 Apr 25 '14 at 08:26
1

The fact that \raggedright is not enclosed in a group with \@opening is actually not a bug, it's the intended design. AFAIK, the convention for letters is not to justify the text, but to have it flushed left. Obviously (and thankfully!), some people might have a different preference than the "conventional wisdom", and an easy way to select what you prefer would probably be a welcome addition to moderncv. – Xavier Aug 16 '15 at 19:29
@Xavier If you are correct, then the "correct" way of doing so would be to apply 'raggedright' separately for the opening the the body of the letter, and not tying the two. – emem Aug 17 '15 at 10:32

score 10 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

10

On ModernCV version 2.0, the answer provided by Werner needs to be updated to:

\usepackage{etoolbox}% http://ctan.org/pkg/etoolbox
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\makeletterhead}% <cmd>
  {\raggedright \@opening}% <search>
  {\@opening}% <replace>
  {}{}% <success><failure>
\makeatother

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

Community

1

answered Aug 16 '15 at 18:41

maccouch

101

1

I'll update my answer to reflect this. There's no need for an additional answer. – Werner Aug 16 '15 at 19:05
1

yeah, i tried to comment on it, but didn't have enough "brownie points" for a comment! sorry, SE rules apparently. – maccouch Aug 17 '15 at 09:52

score 2 · Answer 5 · edited May 16 '13 at 02:09

I have a not so elegant solution using \minipage. That works fine for the casual style but it should work for the other ones as well.

Before \begin{document}, add:

\newlength{\currentparskip}

Then, when writing the letter, after the \makelettertitle command, put:

\setlength{\currentparskip}{\parskip}% save the value of paragraph spacing
\begin{minipage}{\textwidth} %create minipage
    \setlength{\parskip}{\currentparskip}% restore the value    

      TEXT OF THE LETTER

    \end{minipage}

\makeletterclosing

\clearpage

The paragraph spacing is zero in the \minipage, so one has to restore the value so that the text spacing would be ok.

score -1 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 24 '20 at 19:33

-1

The current solutions didn't work for me. Here's what did:

\usepackage{ragged2e}

And then after \makelettertitle I added:

\justifying

Worked on both casual and classic styles on Overleaf.

answered Aug 24 '20 at 19:33

Indradhanush Gupta

99

Justify text in moderncv cover letter

6 Answers6

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