Quote:
Originally Posted by meredithwh
I've been pushing the ragged-right margin for ages, without success. It's much easier to read, apparently especially so for dyslexics. Fully justified text is a hangover from the old days of hand-setting type within metal formes. Time we did away with it.
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I've never really seen a difference in ease of reading between justified and ragged right. But then, I haven't seen a difference is being able to read serif vs sans serif, and have been unimpressed by the arguments that serif is easier. Ease of reading has a lot more to do with how you handle the type than with whether it's serif or sans serif, and setting body copy is an art few have properly mastered.
But justification isn't just a hangover from metal forms. It originated in western publishing because books were laid out as single or double columns, and they were considered to look better if they were of even size. Early books created before movable type become common weren't perfectly justified. They were as close as the skill of the calligrapher creating the page allowed.
It's probably actually easier to set ragged right in hot type than to justify, as there's less fiddling with shims to lock the text on the line. And computerized typesetting and proportional fonts make justification a matter of a program setting when doing the markup.
The web is changing such perceptions in any case. Many sites use sans-serif by default (such as this one), and ragged right columns are common.
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Dennis