H&J: default "Standard"
One of the most complicated parts of QuarkXPress is understanding H&Js, the settings that Quark uses to control Hyphenation and Justification of paragraphs. To change the word spacing of paragraphs, you will apply different H&J settings in the Paragraph Format dialog box.
The default H&J setting in Quark, called "Standard," includes hyphenation, and uses 110% as its value for standard word spacing. That means that it sets type using spaces that are 110% the size of the actual space character in any font. It also allows space between letters to be up to 4% more than the font designer planned.
H&J: default "Standard"
These settings would yield word spacing that is 10% wider than it should be, and unpredictable letter spacing unintended by the designer. I do not recommend these settings, so I suggest you edit them as shown below. (Use Edit / H&Js when no document is open for this to become a global preference.)
H&J: new "Standard"
Notice that it does not allow any letter spacing at all: all the three fields for "character" spacing are set to 0%. You should also know that the new Standard does not allow hyphens.
In your professional life, if you use Quark, you should be sure to implement better H&Js than the default values, and make sure that people you work with use the same Preferences file so that text does not rewrap. Your typesetting will be measurably superior.
When you set poems, captions, or other short pieces of material, you will probably want to use a flush left, ragged right setting, in which hyphens are not allowed.
I have pre-built five H&J settings for unhyphenated text: u1, u2, u3, u4, or u5. These H&J settings have "Auto Hyphenation" turned off. You can append them from a document I provide, or build them yourself.
The H&Js named u1 through u5 differ only in their settings for word spacing. The table below shows the "Optimum" values for word spacing for the five unhyphenated H&J settings. This "Optimum" value is the exact size of each word space as a percentage of the standard word space for the font. This value is used for flush left settings. (The "Minimum" and "Maximum" values are ignored during flush left settings.)
u1 tighter
min opt max
--- 80% ---
M/5 <-- Five spaces fit in an em space.
u2 tight
min opt max
--- 89% ---
M/4.5
u3 normal
min opt max
--- 100% ---
M/4 <-- Four spaces fit in an em space.
u4 loose
min opt max
--- 114% ---
M/3.5
u5 looser
min opt max
--- 133% ---
M/3 <-- Three spaces fit in an em space.
The u3 setting is the same as the Standard setting that is built into the "Normal" paragraph style by default.
You can apply an H&J setting to paragraphs one at a time, or build any of these H&J settings into the "style sheets" that you use in a particular project.
When you are typesetting pages of material, you will often want to use justified type (flush left and flush right) that allows hyphenation.
I have built five H&Js for hyphenated typesetting, called h1, h2, h3, h4, and h5. You should use these in the paragraph styles of justified text. Like the unhyphenated H&Js, these go from tightest to loosest in order.
h1 tighter min opt max 67% 80% 100% M/6 M/5 M/4 h2 tight min opt max 73% 89% 114% M/5.5 M/4.5 M/3.5 h3 normal min opt max 80% 100% 133% M/5 M/4 M/3 h4 loose min opt max 89% 114% 160% M/4.5 M/3.5 M/2.5 h5 looser min opt max 100% 133% 200% M/4 M/3 M/2
For justified text, you need to tell QuarkXPress how much it can squeeze words together or spread them out in order to set the type so that all lines have the same length. The Minimum, Optimum, and Maximum word spacing values tell QXP this information. The program will try to use the Optimum word spacing value, but will change the word spacing on each line as necessary, but always so that the word spacing falls somewhere between the Minimum and the Maximum allowed value.
Note: The "Normal" paragraph style in Quark is set to use the "Standard" H&J as its default. If you are setting justified text and find that words look too spaced out, it may be because hyphenation is not allowed. You should change the H&J for the "Normal" paragraph style to h3. Then you will see hyphenation happen, and the gaps in your lines will be lessened.