WarningTypography & Layout
Underfull \hbox (Poor Word Spacing)
Underfull \hbox (badness 10000) in paragraph at lines N--M.
What this error means
LaTeX couldn't fill a line to the full text width without creating too much visible whitespace between words. This produces lines with large word gaps. Badness 10000 means the spacing is maximally bad.
Common causes
- Very short text in a wide column
- \raggedright or \flushright removing right-justification in a narrow block
- A \linebreak or \newline forcing an early break
- Paragraphs ending with a forced \\
How to fix it
Rewrite the paragraph slightly to give LaTeX more flexibility. You can also add \emergencystretch=3em to the preamble to allow extra stretch. For short captions or labels, \raggedright avoids the badness at the cost of a ragged right margin.
Code examples
Causes the error
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{minipage}{3cm}
A.
\end{minipage}
\end{document}Fixed
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{minipage}{3cm}
\raggedright
A short label.
\end{minipage}
\end{document}Related errors
Test the fix live
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