If you look at most books, magazines or newspapers, you will find that the text is "justified", that is to say that it is aligned to both the left and right margins, like this:
Members of the European Central Bank share a joke following their decision to throw Greece to the wolves. Members of the European Central Bank share a joke following their decision to throw Greece to the wolves.Members of the European Central Bank share a joke following their decision to throw Greece to the wolves.Members of the European Central Bank share a joke following their decision to throw Greece to the wolves.Members of the European Central Bank share a joke following their decision to throw Greece to the wolves.
As opposed to this:
Members of the European Central Bank share a joke following their decision to throw Greece to the wolves. Members of the European Central Bank share a joke following their decision to throw Greece to the wolves.Members of the European Central Bank share a joke following their decision to throw Greece to the wolves.Members of the European Central Bank share a joke following their decision to throw Greece to the wolves.Members of the European Central Bank share a joke following their decision to throw Greece to the wolves.
There are exceptions of course. For instance, I notice that the text in my National Geographic guide books is aligned to the left, as in the second example. But by and large justified text is the norm.
However, look at virtually any site, and indeed any blog, on the Internet and you will see that text is aligned to the left. This holds true even for newspaper and magazine articles which are "justified" in their paper version.
Why the difference? If we accept that reading something on a screen is inherently more tiring than reading from a book, newspaper or magazine, then we need to choose a presentation which is easy on the eyes - and I think non-justified text such as this is less tiring than the "justified" text set out in the first example.
Incidentally, if you often read longer articles or even books on the web, you may be interested in this free little programme that makes online reading a far more agreeable prospect.
Barnaby,
ReplyDeleteMy 68-year-old eyesight means I have to enlarge the type (font-size) on almost all websites.
Your examples show the same words on each line.
However, enlarge the type (cntl + + or cntl + mouse scroll up) and the alignment is still left but the "ragged right" words move down to the next sentence, to the left edge, as you'd intuitively expect.
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Whenever I can, I use Arial Narrow, 11 point, bold, aligned left, not justified (i.e. "ragged right").
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I may have left you this link before, but regardless, here 'tis again:
http://www.typography.com/ask/showBlog.php?blogID=84
A "a pageant of pilcrows" delights me to no end, every time.
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Kind regards,
lesle
Dear lesle
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for your most interesting comment and for the link (new to me). The choice of font is a very personal thing, isn't it. I like the one used by The Atlantic, but I don't know what it is!
Incidentally, I do think that in most cases one's reading of web pages is rendered more pleasurable via "Readability": http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
Best regards
Barnaby