No, I’m not talking about the fantastic Justin Timberlake album.
Text justification on the web is something I have gone back and forth about. As you can tell, I’m rockin’ the ragged right edge at the moment, and here’s why.
Sure, justified text looks nice. And formal. Especially in print, which frequently uses columns, justified text can actually help your reading flow (some people argue), and is used to optimize the amount of text on a page. Besides word spacing, many adjustments are made to ensure maximum readability of justified text in print: margins, font size, word hypenation.
On the web, none of these tools are available. Changes to margins and font sizes are largely pointless—different browsers render text (noticably) differently. Obviously, hyphenation is out. So, the only option we have is word spacing. Here’s the problem: when you read text, your eyes naturally flow from letter to letter, from word to word. Inconsistent word spacing interferes with this flow. Additionally, every so often you’ll end up with a line that just looks absolutely absurd because words are so far apart. Keep in mind, as well, reading text on the web is harder than reading text in print, and that’s just making it worse.
As with my post about ads in blogs, I’m really not trying to rain on anything you’re currently doing. (Deb must think I hate her now. Not true!) In larger (width-wise) blocks of text, the problems are minimized. If I were to justify my sidebar, however, about every other link would end up looking awkward.
Read more:
1. Antipixel | Unjustified
2. Web Style Guide: Alignment
If some enterprising browser maker really wanted to do nicely-justified text, all they would have to do is implement the TeX hyphenation algorithm, which is absolutely beautiful and produces amazingly good output.
Or, failing that, it’d be nice to have Mozilla finally implement soft hyphens, which would help a bit.
In general, though, I find I prefer unjustified text on the web; the ragged edge causes less of a readability problem than other factors (leading, line length, etc.) and any minor issues it causes can typically be overcome with good design.
No offense taken! I absolutely love the way clean shapes created from text look – so neat! So geometrical! However, upon more thought, it seems like a misuse of text, when the purpose should be readability alone. I’m going to have to give this more thought…
You know, I was just thinking about this yesterday while working on a site for work. I’m going to stick with the justifying for now, but I appreciate you sharing the links. Something I will keep bookmarked.