Line up plain text without a word processor

Word processors have alignment buttons, but plain text does not. When you are writing a README, a code comment, a terminal banner or a text receipt, alignment has to be built out of actual space characters. Align Text Pro adds those spaces for you, so each line sits flush left, flush right, centered or stretched to a fixed width.

How to align your text

1. Type or paste your lines into Input Text. Sample loads three example sentences, Paste takes from the clipboard and Clear resets the tool.
2. Select one of the four radio buttons: Left, Center, Right or Justify.
3. Set Width (chars). The default is 80 characters and it defines the width of the imaginary page.
4. Click Align & Format Text.
5. The result appears in a monospaced box. Use Copy or .txt to save aligned_text.txt.

What each alignment does

• Left trims spaces from both ends of every line, so all lines start at the margin.
• Right pads the start of each line with spaces so it finishes at the chosen width.
• Center adds roughly half of the leftover space in front of each line. Nothing is added to the right end.
• Justify spreads the spaces between the words so the line fills the full width, giving extra spaces to the earlier gaps first.

Good places to use it

• Centering a title or notice inside a plain-text file or terminal welcome message.
• Right-aligning a signature, date or price column in a text email.
• Creating a block of justified lines for a monospaced poster or banner.
• Cleaning up ragged indentation by resetting everything to Left.

Limits to understand

Every line is treated on its own and nothing is wrapped, so a line longer than the width stays as it is in Center, Right and Justify modes. Justify stretches every line, including the last line of a paragraph, and a single-word line is left alone. Because the effect is made from spaces, it only looks right in a monospaced font; paste it into a proportional-font document and the alignment will drift. Blank lines are kept, and the overall text is trimmed at its start and end. If you need wrapped paragraphs, break your lines at your target width first. The processing runs in your browser page.

Related Tools

• Add Line Breaks
• Add Prefix
• Add Suffix
• Add Watermark