Cleanup Text

[Riverrun]

I came across a fascinating account of the American Civil War today in the form of a letter written by a first hand witness. Unfortunately, there is something about the formatting which I don't like. The alignment leaves a considerable gap between the end of a line and the right hand margin. I would like to get rid of that gap. Converting to Plain Text does not work, neither does select and justify. No matter what I do the formatting remains. Here is a sample of the letter:

"I am a daughter of Mr. William D. Cobb and wife, Ann Collier. My father 
lived on his plantation nine miles from Goldsboro, Wayne County, on the 
south side of the Neuse River. He was a stock farmer and did not raise 
cotton until the war began in 1861. All southern farmers then raised 
cotton to help clothe the Confederate soldiers. We did not approve of 
succession, but wanted to fight for States Rights under the flag which 
our fathers had fought for."

You may have to past it into a TextEdit or Pages to see what I mean. There is an alignment to the left and an irregular, white-space to the right.

There must be an easy way of cleaning this problem up rather than laboriously doing it manually.

I would dearly like to know how as I have a number of other documents in the same condition.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

Its full of line breaks, do a global search and replace, replacing every line break by a space.

How to do that depends what text editor you are using. Google for the app you are using or post here.

"I am a daughter of Mr. William D. Cobb and wife, Ann Collier. My father lived on his plantation nine miles from Goldsboro, Wayne County, on the south side of the Neuse River. He was a stock farmer and did not raise cotton until the war began in 1861. All southern farmers then raised cotton to help clothe the Confederate soldiers. We did not approve of succession, but wanted to fight for States Rights under the flag which our fathers had fought for."

edit I see you said Pages, my bad.

do View > Show Invisibles.

copy one of the line breaks by highlighting it and CMD C.
Then Edit > Find >Find
which brings up the search and replace box.
Paste the line break into the find field
Type a space in the replace field
Select replace all.

 

[Riverrun]

Thanks

Thanks Tumbleweed, that helped a lot!