The Project Gutenberg FAQ - R-30

R.30. When I print out the text file, each line runs over the edge of the page and looks bad.

If you have a file ending in .txt from Project Gutenberg, it is usually formatted with about 70 characters per line, and with a Carriage Return/Line Feed pair (also known as a "Hard Return" or a "Paragraph Mark") at the end of every line.

This is the most widely accepted format for text files, but it's not ideal on all computers and all programs. 70 characters per line means that if you are using an unusually large or small font to print it, lines may wrap around or not reach across the page. The hard return means that on some systems, the lines may appear double-spaced.

Unfortunately, we can't advise you how best to format texts on all systems, mostly because we don't know every system! Here are a couple of tips you might try:

If your font is too big or too small, try setting the font to Courier size 10 or Times size 12. It may not be ideal, but it mostly works.

In a word processor, you may be able to remove the Hard Returns, but beware! if you remove too many, the whole text will become one paragraph. One common formula for removing the HRs goes like this:

1. First, all paragraphs and separate lines should be separated by two HRs, so that you can see one blank line between them. Where they aren't, as in the case of a table of contents or lines of verse, add the extra HRs to make them so.
2. Replace All occurrences of two HRs with some nonsense character or string that doesn't exist in the text, like ~$~.
3. Replace All remaining HRs with a space.
4. Replace your inserted string ~$~ with one HR.

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