The Stretched Text
When formatting a document in Google Docs, you have four alignment options: Left, Center, Right, and Justify. If you paste text from a PDF, a heavily formatted website, or a specific Word document template, Google Docs may attempt to match the source styling and automatically apply the “Justify” alignment to those paragraphs. Justified text stretches the words so that both the left and right margins form perfectly straight, flush vertical lines. While this looks neat in a narrow newspaper column, in a standard web document, it forces Docs to insert massive, awkward gaps of white space between words to achieve the perfect edges, making the text incredibly difficult to read.
Reverting to Left Alignment
To eliminate the ugly white gaps and stop Google Docs from automatically justifying text based on pasted formatting, you must explicitly force the standard left-alignment style onto the affected paragraphs.
Highlight the specific block of text that is stretched and gappy (or press Ctrl+A to select the entire document if the whole thing is ruined). Look at the main toolbar above the document. You will see four icons showing horizontal lines representing text alignment. The fourth icon from the left in that group (which shows perfectly straight edges on both sides) is the ‘Justify’ button. To fix the text, click the first icon in that group: Left align (or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+L on Windows / Command+Shift+L on Mac). This instantly removes the forced stretching, returning the text to a natural reading flow with a ragged right edge and consistent spacing between words.