To Justify or not to Justify?

[gmw]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's not loaded. The issue was posed in another thread about how to justify an eBook. With an eBook, there is no "I don't care" option. You have left or full. So the poll I set up is to match the eBook. It has to be one or the other.

"Don't care" even applies when creating an e-book. People that don't care generally take the default, go with the flow, make a best guess, or look around to see what everyone else is doing. So, for example, if a survey shows that a majority of people don't care, then the question itself becomes moot.

Originally Posted by VydorScope

My source documents that I send out (EPUB, MOBI, and DOC) are not full justified nor do they look justified on my Nook Color. Could something have happened in any of the gazillion possible combinations of conversions and e-readers along the way? Yeah, probably.

Beyond that... I dunno!

Curious. I just re-downloaded the epub from Smashwords (to be sure, to be sure) and it definitely has "text-align: justify" in the styles, so it's not just my reader that's doing it. I see that the html and PDF versions of the book are not justified. So it seems like something the meatgrinder must be adding.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by J. Garrett

In general, I prefer full justification wherever possible. But maybe that's due to mild OCD and perfectionists tendencies that lend me to prefer symmetry over non-symmetry.

lol - That's awesome!! I'm that way in everything else...can't stand when things aren't lined up or centered just right...but not in my books...I guess I'm weirder than I already thought!

[J. Garrett]

I checked out two different ebooks today, just to see the difference between justified and not-justified on my 6" Kindle. Man...those ragged edges just hurt me so much in a very deep and very personal way. I don't like the way it looks at all. Give me an aligned letters on the right side, I don't care how much space there has to be between each word!

That's what I'd like to say, anyway, but the ebook without justification had something even worse: added white space between each paragraph. Good Lord Almighty, just looking at that for a minute made me want to puke my guts out. And unfortunately, that was a book I wanted to read!

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by gmw

Curious. I just re-downloaded the epub from Smashwords (to be sure, to be sure) and it definitely has "text-align: justify" in the styles, so it's not just my reader that's doing it. I see that the html and PDF versions of the book are not justified. So it seems like something the meatgrinder must be adding.

I am not surprised, but wish it would not add that. Ah, well.

[Dr. Drib]

Duplicate threads (started by different members, I will emphasize) are sometimes allowed on MobileRead.

It could be argued that authors/publishers may have a different slant on a given issue. For that reason, we have decided to leave this thread open.


Don
(Moderator)

[kennyc]

Left justification, no hyphenation!

[gmw]

Thanks Don. I'll try not to make a habit of it.

[frahse]

What does "don't care" really and I mean really, really mean for a reader, for a writer?

[gmw]

Originally Posted by frahse

What does "don't care" really and I mean really, really mean for a reader, for a writer?

Read some of the posts on the thread that JSWolf started. Several in there stated that it made no difference to them, that they'd have to back and check to see how previous books were formatted, they hadn't even noticed*. That, to my way of thinking, is "don't care" for readers.

If such people were to write a book they might not even think about whether to justify or not - and so would end up with whatever defaults were applied in the software they used. That is (at least one version of) "don't care" for writers.

* I must add a qualifier here. Just because a person doesn't notice something doesn't always mean they don't care. If they've never see the version they didn't like they may never have had reason to know whether they care or not.

[frahse]

gmw,

this has been already been covered in part, but to restate it somewhat, I say that sometimes a "laissez faire" point of view is best where you do what is easy and simple and don't waste energy struggling against a system.

It is the story and the telling that is important, is most important, and indeed all that is important.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by frahse

[...]It is the story and the telling that is important, is most important, and indeed all that is important.

I don't agree that it is "all that is important" - not if you intend to publish (as opposed to writing a story and keeping it entirely to yourself). One of the objects of publishing (self or otherwise) is to make the story presentable for reading by others, and in that case other things do become important (not as important, but still important).

Something that gets reinforced from surveys such as this one is that you can't please everyone, but what this one (and Jon's) does tell us is that the split is close enough to 50-50 that a writer's choice probably doesn't matter. Had it turned significantly one way or another, then that could have been important information for writers that preferred the alternative.

Reading the posts that go with these surveys, my guess is that whichever option you pick you are probably going to offend somewhere around 25% of readers, delight around 25% and make little difference to the other 50%. (Although obviously our statistical sample is too small for those figures to be anywhere near accurate.)


But I do agree with what I think is the sentiment expressed in your post. Spending excessive time worrying over the minutiae is not a good thing (and you know me well enough by now to know that I do* ). The minutiae can be important, but it shouldn't be blown out of perspective either.

* I think it's a form of procrastination.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by gmw

Reading the posts that go with these surveys, my guess is that whichever option you pick you are probably going to offend somewhere around 25% of readers, delight around 25% and make little difference to the other 50%. (Although obviously our statistical sample is too small for those figures to be anywhere near accurate.)

I suspect it's closer to 10/10/80% split. Or maybe 5/5/90%. These discussions only bring in the people who are actually interested in the subject.

This topic shows up every few months, and the results are always the same: some people adamantly prefer one, about an equal number adamantly prefer the other, and the majority shrug and say "whatever." I think it's good to keep checking; if ebook technology changes, we may see a noticeable shift in preferences. But for now, what I get from the surveys is "just go with whatever you like; it's not going to make a noticeable difference in public reaction or sales."

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I suspect it's closer to 10/10/80% split.

This. No matter what you do, someone will complain... but most just want a good story to read. So long as what you do does not prevent/hinder that, they will not care.


That is my personal experience, and it seem to hold true in many more areas then just books...

[frahse]

We all have things we are picky about.

Mine are TV series, and Movies that become unrealistic just to satisfy some directors or producers whim.

There are also those films that just change something and never go back and re-shoot the connector.

YOU CAN'T DO GOOD WORK WHILE HIGH!

(not referring to magic or supernatural here)

[theducks]

Justified, but I wish devices would do a better job of (including) spacing of letters instead of having huge canyons between words.