LaTeX \sloppy and \fussy line breaking

In my thesis, I use words like "visualization-related" a lot. Such words should not be further hyphenated, since it may look awkward.

Example: manual hyphenation

Words  break awkwardly

like visualization-rel-
ated or like visualiza-
tion-related.

The hyphenation for line breaking will interfere with the initial hyphenation and impair readability.

In LaTeX, the default line breaking mode is \fussy. This mode tries to present the words on each line very condensed, not allowing for the space between two words becoming too large. However, this causes problems with hyphenated words that should not be hyphenated any further. If the entire word would be moved to the next line, then the inter-word space on the current line would suddenly be too large. LaTeX then decides not to hyphenate AND not to break, but instead let the word flow over.

Example: default \fussy mode

All words break normally but
may overflow like visualization-
related or visualization-related.


The overflow can be removed by setting \sloppy mode instead of \fuzzy mode in your preabmle or locally using {\sloppy ... }. This forces overflowing words to move to the next line, but may lead to large inter-word spaces on the current line.

Example: alternative \sloppy mode

All  words  break  normally
and  without  overflow like 
visualization-related,  but
also   like   visualization-
related.   But   inter-word
space can be very large.

Getting to best of both worlds


Lately, I am writing my documents as follows:
  1. Start writing your document in \sloppy mode.
  2. Extend, rewrite, review, revise the document until it is nearly ready for publication/submission.
  3. Switch to \fuzzy mode and fix any problems manually.
Manual fixing will be mostly done by (1) rewriting a few sentences, or by (2) telling LaTeX exactly where to break.

For Option 1, just add a few words, such as a "the" or rephrase some words from short nouns to using a phrase with an "ing"-form. Exchanging verbs also helps. 

Example: rephrasing to push over hyphenated words (before and after)

All words break normally but
may overflow like visualization-
related or visualization-related.


All words break normally but
also  suffer  from  overflow

like visualization-related or
visualization-related.

The problem is that the overflow may be pushed down, i.e., other words following long hyphenated words may not be allowed to wrap over,  due to the prioritization of inter-word spaces. In this case, LaTeX can be told where to break and thus occasionally violate the inter-word spacing rule.

Therefore, you need Option 2, the \linebreak{} command to manually wrap over while leaving the previous line justified; however awkward it may look thereafter. In LyX this special line break can be inserted via Insert > Formatting > Justified Line Break and depending on your OS it should have a hotkey you should remember. 

Example: additional line breaks (before and after)

All words break normally but
also  suffer  from  overflow
 
like visualization-related or
visualization-related.

All words break normally but
also  suffer  from  overflow
 
like   visualization-related \linebreak{}
or visualization-related.

The broken line may suffer from larger inter-word space. You just have to find a nice compromise here. In texts with more words per line than the shown examples, additional white-space is less notable and the fixes should be easier, i.e., the overflow will not be pushed down to following words.

There is also an Option 3: Instead of manually fixing, you can wrap a paragraph with {\sloppy ... } to temporarily allow large inter-word spaces. However, I like Options 1 and 2 better.








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