Spacing after a period on full justification

[royroy]

Is there anyway to ensure that there is exactly one space between a period and the next word on full justification? Currently, it stretches out the space between periods and words and my report guidelines don't allow that. Thanks in advance.

[floris v]

What exactly do you mean? In fully justified text the space between words on most lines will be stretched, not just the space between a period and the next word, unless you typed two spaces in a row. If your report guidelines forbid different spaces between words, you should select align left instead of justify in options on the alignment tab of the paragraph formatting dialog. Select "Display non-printing characters" (click ¶) to display the non-printing characters (and turn spaces on in the formatting aids tab of the Writer options dialog, which will help you keep your text tidy.

[huw]

If you actually do want full justification with spaces after periods not being tracked, whilst every other space is (along with all the letters, of course), then replace all your spaces after periods with non-breaking spaces (Ctrl+Spacebar). They will not be tracked (i.e. they are fixed width). This can be done with Find & Replace. Be aware that this may well end up looking odd.

Edit: removed erroneous reference to double spaces and clarified.

[royroy]

To clarify, my report guidelines require full justification, but for only one space character to appear between a word and a period. The full justification should take effect only between words.

[foxcole]

To clarify, my report guidelines require full justification, but for only one space character to appear between a word and a period. The full justification should take effect only between words.

"One space character" is not the same as one space width. You achieve one space character by hitting the space bar once. (Or by inserting one Unicode character.) A fixed-width space would look awful in a fully justified paragraph. I'd suggest you might want to talk with your instructor and clarify the requirements.

[royroy]

Not sure of the terminology, but yes, I want a fixed width between a period and the next word. I am positive that they are the requirements of the report. It also can't be all that uncommon, as my roommates were able to quite easily get this to be done in LaTeX.

[floris v]

In LaTeX you can do virtually anything. That's what it's been designed for. So if you can achieve that in LaTeX, that means nothing.
If you insist on a fixed width space between a period and the next word, use a protected space (Ctrl + space).

I am positive that they are the requirements of the report.

I am positive that you are wrong. in the past it was common to have two spaces after the period concluding a sentence, and the requirements of the report warn against that kind of thing. In modern usage you want an even spacing between all words in a line (except in numbers; numbers may be written with spaces in languages like Dutch: 12,000 in English notation would be written as 12 000 in Dutch, and sometimes a narrow space is then used for better readability.)