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?

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5
  • 3
    For the first one, you could use \url from the url package.
    – Gonzalo Medina
    Commented Jun 8, 2012 at 21:21
  • 1
    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
    Commented Jun 8, 2012 at 21:41
  • 2
    Nobody suggests microtype? That won't help you there but it is always good to consider when typing text
    – topskip
    Commented Jun 8, 2012 at 22:06
  • 1
    The word "Plugin-Entwicklungsumgebung" should be written as Plugin"=Entwicklungsumgebung
    – topskip
    Commented Jun 8, 2012 at 22:27
  • 1
    Contrarian question: how do I enable \sloppy throughout the whole document?
    – shuhalo
    Commented Aug 18, 2023 at 21:34

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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}
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1
  • 1
    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
    Commented Jun 8, 2012 at 22:32
35

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.

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2
  • 1
    Does it matter where you put this command?
    – tparker
    Commented May 17, 2018 at 14:07
  • 2
    I'd put in in the preamble, or within a group - depending on what you want to achieve.
    – mbork
    Commented May 18, 2018 at 11:16
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.

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1
  • 2
    \begin{sloppypar} uses \sloppy locally and is documented here: tex.stackexchange.com/a/50850/1340—that answer recommends considering emergencystretch over sloppy, as the former does not allow small overfull hboxes.
    – Blaisorblade
    Commented Aug 27, 2017 at 9:13

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