Justification, Old School
Even with today’s very sophisticated H&J [Hyphenation and Justification] algorithms — some of which can even scale the actual dimensions of letterforms in order to improve copyfit — the chief ingredient in good H&J controlling the number of letters per line. Contemporary newspapers do this through aggressive hyphenation; their forbears did it through colorful spelling.
Interesting little article about the history of justification – The Universe of Discourse: Diacritics and horseheads.
Colourful spelling sounds a lot more fun than stretching letters …