FAQ(27) - fill-paragraph function does not fill ??

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QUESTION (27)

fill-paragraph function does not fill ??

I can't seem to get the fill-paragraph function to fill the following paragraph:

This is a very 
poorly formed paragraph 
which refuses to fill 
properly!

ANSWER

The default justification mode is Auto which tries to work out the mode required for each paragraph. Its fairly smart at maintaining a documents indentation, e.g. consider the example right hand justified:

                                                    This is a very 
                                           poorly formed paragraph 
                                             which refuses to fill 
                                                         properly!

It will maintain this indentation. The problem comes when the detected form is not the required form as in the example. The detected paragraph justification to be used is "none" because the lines are short. There are 2 ways to solve this problem:

You can change the $fill-mode(5) to left or both (in fhook-doc mode use C-c l or C-c b) and then use fill-paragraph as normal.
Manually concatenate the first few lines into one to create a longer first line and then use the fill-paragraph a normal, i.e. change the paragraph to:
This is a very poorly formed paragraph which refuses to fill properly !
and then fill. This works because the longer line will lead to a different assessment of what's required.

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Ref: FAQ(27) - fill-paragraph function does not fill ?? File: faq.2 Date: 2026/03/05