Left-justify text in LaTeX
I recommend you load the ragged2e
package (part of the ms suite of packages) with the document
option:
\usepackage[document]{ragged2e}
With this setup, all parts of the document will be typeset left-justified (or "flush-left") rather than fully-justified. The term "all parts of the document" includes:
- regular material in the body of the document -- mostly, all paragraphs
- all footnotes
- all material in
minipage
environments - all
p
-type columns intabular
-like andarray
environments - all material in
\parbox
es - all material in
\marginpar
directives.
In contrast, inserting the "standard LaTeX" \raggedright
directive immediately after \begin{document}
affects only the "regular" material; it does not affect any of other five types of material, at least not when executed solely after \begin{document}
.
Relative to the \raggedright
directive, employing the ragged2e
package also preserves TeX's ability to hyphenate words. This, in turn, avoids creating the excessive line raggedness that almost invariably results from using \raggedright
.
A separate observation: In the standard LaTeX document classes, material contained in a "floating" environment -- such as figure
and table
-- is aligned flush-left by default. If you want to center the contents of these environments, you may do so by issuing a \centering
instruction after the \begin{figure}
and \begin{table}
directives. (The scope of the \centering
instruction ends automatically when LaTeX processes the \end{figure}
and \end{table}
statements.)
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[document]{ragged2e}
\usepackage{lipsum,xcolor}
\begin{document}
%%\raggedright % this directive only affects "regular" material
\marginpar{\textcolor{red}{Marginpar}\\\lipsum[2]}
{\color{red}Regular Material}\\
\lipsum[2]
aaa\footnote{\textcolor{red}{Footnote}\lipsum*[2]}
\textcolor{red}{Minipage}\\
\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
\lipsum[2]
\end{minipage}
\textcolor{red}{Tabular}\\
\begin{tabular}{@{}p{\textwidth}@{}}
\lipsum[2]
\end{tabular}
\textcolor{red}{Parbox}\\
\parbox{\textwidth}{\lipsum[2]}
\end{document}
As far as TeX's alignment goes a graphic is just the same as a big letter, it does not treat it any differently.
If you want your entire document flush left it is better to use the declaration form \raggedright
after \begin{document}
and then use \begin{center}
or \begin{flushright}
around your \includegraphics
. Of if they are already in an environment such as figure
perhaps use the declaration forms \centering
or \raggedleft
rather than the environments.