Re: To justify or not?

At 2:51 PM -0700 5/3/2001, Sue Bailey wrote:
>Is there any received wisdom about whether justified or non-justified
>text is easier to read on-screen? It's a one column page, approx. 10-15
>words per line; I think justified makes a better looking page, but I
>_hate_ the lumps of white-space it puts in lines with several long
>words!!

Do not even attempt justified text unless you have the capability (and are
willing to put in the time) to adjust kerning, hyphenation, interletter
spacing, and interword spacing. Book designers who use justification
control all these factors to make the page's color (percentage of ink per
unit area) consistent.

For screen, that basically boils down to "don't do it". Those "lumps of
white space" do real damage to readability and they can't be avoided
without the sort of fine-grained control you don't have in a browser. On a
screen, you can't even make adjustments of less than a point, and while I
think CSS offers a bit of whitespace control I'm not sure any current
browser even implements it.

--
jeanne a. e. devoto ~ jaed(at)jaedworks.com
http://www.jaedworks.com

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