[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ApK

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?

Well, hell, if I were like everyone else on the Internet, sure I could. I'd just say, 'cuz I say so, and that would be FACT, right? :-)

Check Bringhurst, "The Elements of Typographic Style," Fourth Edition. It's considered a bit of a Bible on typography. Nowhere--nowhere--does the phrasing "left-justify" or "right-justify" appear.

"If the text is set ragged right, the word space (the space between words) can be fixed and unchanging. If the text is justified (set flush left and right, like the text in this book, that space must usually be elastic."

--Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style, 4th Ed. p.26, text produced as-is, no emphasis added.

Technically, it's not aligned-left, rr, it's "flush left, ragged right," which typographers abbreviate as "FL/RR." Alternatively, it's "FR/RL" (Flush Right, Ragged Left), and Justified. The actual definition of "justified," from Bringhurst, is:

"Justify To adjust the length of the line so tha tit is flush left and right on the measure. Type in the Latin alphabet is commonly set either justified or FL/RR (flush left, ragged right)"

--Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style, 4th Ed. p.341, text produced as-is, no emphasis added

You ask



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.

Hey, argue with the typographers, not me. Programmers may have decided that using "left-justify," for some bizarro-world reason, made more sense to them than "FL/RR," but to me, it's simply tautological to use "full justify," because quite simply, what OTHER justification is there?

As I said, whatever someone's word-processor taught them, if you really think about the idea, either "justify" now means NOTHING, or "left-justify" is nonsensical, because it means, start text flush left, and justify it to...where? If it's to the right margin, that's justified text. If it's "right-justified," again, you put the text flush-right, and justify it to...where? Even the OED states that justification is:

"8. v.t. Orig., make exact, adjust to exact shape, size, or position. Now, spec. in Typogr. etc., adjust spacing along (a line of text) to a prescribed measure so that adjacent lines are of equal length; arrange (a body of text) into lines of equal length. M16."

So, take it up with whomever wrote Wordperfect, which is from whence I think this all originated. Somebody, somewhere, swore that they had "left-justify" or whatever on Word, and maybe it does; I honestly don't recall. I know that the current-ish iteration has align left, right, centered, or justified.

Hitch