3 ms·

It is used in print to pack in the most letters into a single line, because the layout is fixed and words can be broken. It was simply economic to do so. Today

It is used in print to pack in the most letters into a single line, because the layout is fixed and words can be broken. It was simply economic to do so. Today we don't have that constraint and with tons of displays we can't be sure how the text will look fully justified. Browsers are indeed bad at it, but we don't need fully justified text in the first place. For me personally, I prefer varying line lengths because I can easily keep track where the previous line was. https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/93429/why-is-text-justified-in-newspapers-but-not-on-the-web https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/93429/why-is-text-jus... https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/24025/should-text-on-the-web-be-justified https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/24025/should-text-on-...

bovine3dom 8y ago
I was hoping for rigorous studies rather than opinions as I have plenty of those myself :) Thank you for taking the time to respond, though. I had not heard the columns-as-line-separators argument before, but I'm not sure I buy it as most books are justified but do not use multiple columns. > with tons of displays we can't be sure how the text will look fully justified. This argument could be applied to ragged text, too. Are you saying that you can't be sure how it looks and therefore you can't justify it? The answer then seems to simply be "compute the layout on the client", as is done anyway.
- kowdermeister 8y ago
  There is none I'm aware of, but there are some quotes though :) I think we have justified text because of historic reason, it doesn't make much use on the web since it's a totally new medium. > Are you saying that you can't be sure how it looks and therefore you can't justify it? No, I'm saying it's unpredictable so we should avoid using it, while left aligned text is the default that works best in any circumstance.
Someone 8y ago
”It is used in print to pack in the most letters into a single line” Huh? I would think that, for every fully justified line there’s a left-justified one with the same content that is, at worst, equally wide, but typically less wide. I think full justification traditionally is done for aesthetics, possibly with a bit of “look what we can do” added (it takes a better typesetter to set a line fully justified than it does to set a left-justified one with equal-sized spacing, even when both cases use kerning)
- kowdermeister 8y ago
  > for every fully justified line there’s a left-justified one with the same content Justification makes sense when you can hyphenate words, that way you can pack more letters, otherwise the whole word would break into the next line.
  - Someone 8y ago
    You can hyphenate ragged lines, too. And that’s not frowned upon by typographers (at least not by all of them). https://practicaltypography.com/hyphenation.html https://practicaltypography.com/hyphenation.html: ”In left-aligned text, hyphenation evens the irregular right edge of the text, called the rag.”

bovine3dom 8y ago

I was hoping for rigorous studies rather than opinions as I have plenty of those myself :) Thank you for taking the time to respond, though. I had not heard the columns-as-line-separators argument before, but I'm not sure I buy it as most books are justified but do not use multiple columns. > with tons of displays we can't be sure how the text will look fully justified. This argument could be applied to ragged text, too. Are you saying that you can't be sure how it looks and therefore you can't justify it? The answer then seems to simply be "compute the layout on the client", as is done anyway.

kowdermeister 8y ago
There is none I'm aware of, but there are some quotes though :) I think we have justified text because of historic reason, it doesn't make much use on the web since it's a totally new medium. > Are you saying that you can't be sure how it looks and therefore you can't justify it? No, I'm saying it's unpredictable so we should avoid using it, while left aligned text is the default that works best in any circumstance.

Someone 8y ago

”It is used in print to pack in the most letters into a single line” Huh? I would think that, for every fully justified line there’s a left-justified one with the same content that is, at worst, equally wide, but typically less wide. I think full justification traditionally is done for aesthetics, possibly with a bit of “look what we can do” added (it takes a better typesetter to set a line fully justified than it does to set a left-justified one with equal-sized spacing, even when both cases use kerning)

kowdermeister 8y ago
> for every fully justified line there’s a left-justified one with the same content Justification makes sense when you can hyphenate words, that way you can pack more letters, otherwise the whole word would break into the next line.
- Someone 8y ago
  You can hyphenate ragged lines, too. And that’s not frowned upon by typographers (at least not by all of them). https://practicaltypography.com/hyphenation.html https://practicaltypography.com/hyphenation.html: ”In left-aligned text, hyphenation evens the irregular right edge of the text, called the rag.”