Lines too wide

2.3 Lines too wide

L A TEX reads the text in the source file one line at a time and when the end of a paragraph is reached, L A TEX typesets the entire paragraph. Occasionally, L A TEX gets into trouble when trying to split the paragraph into typeset lines. To illustrate this situation, modify note1.tex. In the second sentence, replace term by strange term and in the fourth sentence, delete Rudi , including the blank space following Rudi. Now save this modified file in your work folder using the name note1b.tex. You can also find note1b.tex in the samples folder (see page 4).

Typesetting note1b.tex, you obtain the following: It is of some concern to me that the terminology used in multi-section math

courses is not uniform. In several sections of the course on matrix theory, the strange term “hamiltonian- reduced” is used. I, personally, would rather call these “hyper-simple”. I invite others to comment on this problem.

Of special concern to me is the terminology in the course by Prof. Hochschwabauer. Since his field is new, there is no accepted terminology. It is imperative that we arrive at a satisfactory solution.

The first line of paragraph two is about 1/4 inch too wide. The first line of para- graph three is even wider. In the log window, L A TEX displays the following messages:

Overfull \hbox (15.38948pt too wide) in paragraph at lines 9--15 []\OT1/cmr/m/n/10 In sev-eral sec-tions of the course on ma-trix the-ory, the strange term ‘‘hamiltonian-

Overfull \hbox (23.27834pt too wide) in paragraph at lines 16--21 []\OT1/cmr/m/n/10 Of spe-cial con-cern to me is the ter-mi-nol-ogy in the course by Prof. Hochschwabauer.

You will find the same messages in the log file (see Sections 1.3 and D.2.1). The first message, Overfull \hbox (15.38948pt too wide) in paragraph

at lines 9--15 refers to the second paragraph (lines 9–15 in the source file—its location in the typeset

document is not specified). The typeset version of this paragraph has a line that is 15.38948 points too wide. L A TEX uses points (pt) to measure distances; there are about

72 points in 1 inch (or about 28 points in 1 cm).

2.4 More text features

The next two lines, []\OT1/cmr/m/n/10 In sev-eral sec-tions of the course

on ma-trix the-ory, the strange term ‘‘hamiltonian-

identify the source of the problem: L A TEX did not properly hyphenate the word hamiltonian-reduced because it (automatically) hyphenates a hyphenated word only at the hyphen.

The second reference, Overfull \hbox (23.27834pt too wide) in paragraph

at lines 16--21 is to the third paragraph (lines 16–21 of the source file). There is a problem with the

word Hochschwabauer; L A TEX’s standard hyphenation routine cannot handle it (a Ger- man hyphenation routine would have no difficulty hyphenating this name—see Ap- pendix G). If you encounter such a problem, you can either try to reword the sentence or

insert one or more optional (or discretionary) hyphen commands (\-), which tell L A TEX where it may hyphenate the word. In this case, you can rewrite Hochschwabauer as Hoch\-schwa\-bauer and the second hyphenation problem disappears. You can also utilize the \hyphenation command (see Section 5.4.9).

Sometimes a small horizontal overflow can be difficult to spot. The draft doc- ument class option may help (see Sections 11.5, 12.1.2, and 18.1 for more about doc- ument class options). L A TEX places a black box (or slug) in the margin to mark an overfull line. You can invoke this option by changing the \documentclass line to

\documentclass[draft]{sample}

A version of note1b.tex with this option can be found in the samples folder under the name noteslug.tex. Typeset it to see the “slugs”.