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Originally Posted by Hitch
Left-aligned, or RR (ragged right). If you think about it, "justified" means simply, that a line of text is made precisely equal, in length, to the lines around it (above, below). All the lines are justified, from one margin--whatever that is--to the other. If you could/did "left-justify" something, what would that mean? Or Right-justify? There's right-align, left-align, and justify.
Some programs, back in the day, used terms like "left-justify" and "right-justify" instead of "left-align" and "right-align," and heavens help us all, the APA even adopted the terms, so now people think that they're correct. I did point out that using that criterion, (that a "lotta people" think that something is correct), that "I could care less" must now be proper grammer meaning that one could not care less, but that point seems to have been lost. ;-)
Does that make sense?
Hitch
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WAIT WAIT! Hrmm. You can't just undo everything I've learned from decades of word processing on your say so!
Can you point me to some authoritative evidence for your non-thing claim?
I mean, why are you right and the menu of my word processor wrong?
You ask
Quote:
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If you could/did "left-justify" something, what would that mean?
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Well, according to my word processor menu, I can/do, and it means precisely what we all know it to mean. It's a synonym for left flush, simple as that.
Now, I'm with you on the idea that shifts of language, if only due to ignorance, should be resisted, but I'd like see some evidence that it was the guy who named the word processor feature that was ignorant of the matter, and not...um....you.
But seriously, even if you are correct, and I figure you are, it would not be the same as using non-standard spelling because you couldn't bother to open a dictionary.
It would be, I'd guess, a reasonable back-formation from justification. And creating, and latching onto, a synonym that more uniquely ties the idea to another typographical term, as opposed to using the more multipurpose "flush" or "aligned" is a perfectly valid reason for shift in a living language in my book.