Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I honestly don't recall ever having come across a left-justified book (other than poetry). Why would you want such a thing?
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Well, I read all the books [that can be edited/reformated] left justified.
I use fbreader180, so I can easily set the main text to be left justified.
Before the third party fbreader180 was available I have manually edited the \system\config\styles.xml file to get left justified text and bigger first line indent.
I prefer left justified e-books.
The right edge of fully justified text looks good, but you have to have line of reasonable length (not in distance, but in number of words) in order for text, and especially spaces between words, to look good as well.
If the line contains too few characters (words), the inter-word spaces width can vary wildly. This leads to typographical rivers - where spaces between words are visually joined and create "rivers" or even "lakes". Such pages also tend to have very uneven "typographical grey". Typographical grey is perceived evenness of distribution of ink on page. You look at the page from distance, with half closed eyes, so you do not see individual characters, but only grey color.
Printed books do use full justification, because a typical line in a printed book has more characters (words) than a typical line in an ebook, so statistics works in your favor. Also, printed books are [supposed to be] edited by a human being - a trained typographer that can make adjustments, so the text looks nice and evenly distributed. If you do not have trained typographer checking the complete layout, you should at least use advanced algorithms for balancing spaces, such as those used by TeX packages, or inDesign. Software in e-book readers does not have this level of sophistication yet. And frankly, many, many people simply do not care.
Newspapers use full justification, because the text is often in narrow columns, and it would be impossible for you to follow the text without clearly defined right edge.
I do not have a formal typographical education, but I have worked in field and I had to learn many things "on the job". Also, once you are trained to see typographical flaws, you find them distracting ;-)
I am also curious, so I looked up lots of typographical information.
I was wondering why are people so keen on fully justified text. Several influential typographers said (and have proven) that left justified text is easier to comprehend. I made a little research and I was quite startled to discover that THE very first book ever printed with the use of movable type - yes, I mean the Gutenberg Bible - had fully justified text. THE Bible was printed in two columns and we assume that the full justification was indicating the right edge of the text so it is easy to follow. The Gutenberg typographers went so far, that they have put the hyphens outside the right margin, because when you put the hyphen inside the right edge you get something that looks like a notch in a straight edge. They employed this technique in reprints they made later, or perhaps in the second half of the book. I do not remember. I was very surprised to learn that the most of typographical rules were discovered, very, very early. The early typographers and type cutters/designers have very strong influence. Just look up typography history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...ern_typography
And besides, it is *my* reader and I set it up to display the books the way that *I* like. Period. I have been experimenting a lot. Fully justified books in PocketBook look definitely better than they did on Sony Reader, because the [third party] fbreader has relatively fine control over hyphenation. I keep returning to the left justified setup.