How to Use Justification Properly?

[phillipgessert]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

From what I have found, every device that allows users to pick between ragged-right and fully-justified can do so regardless of how the underlying text is formatted.

For that reason, I format the text with what I would like users to see if they have no choice. In other words, there is no way to please every user if they all use devices that don't allow changing justification, so picking one is no worse than not picking one (somebody will be upset regardless of your choice).

My mentality is that no one is unhappy to see whatever they expected to see, and the surest way to do that is to leave it unset so it falls back on whatever they have preconfigured.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by phillipgessert

My mentality is that no one is unhappy to see whatever they expected to see, and the surest way to do that is to leave it unset so it falls back on whatever they have preconfigured.

The problem lies, first, in that users don't know "a priori" what the book should look like, and second, in that e-readers aren't smart enough.

Because when the user chooses whether they want the text left-aligned or justified, the e-readers override the styles in the CSS sheet and applie the user's choice to all tags (<h*>, <div>, <blockquote>, <p>, etc.) and not just the body text. This way, text that, for design reasons (to make what is being read more understandable and to convey the book's author's message), should be centered or right-aligned, appears left-aligned. The same thing happens if the user chooses the justified text option. Every paragraph, and every line of text whose width is less than 100% of the screen width, will appear left-aligned (regardless of whether the text should be centered or right-aligned), and everything else will be justified (this way, two lines of text that should be centered will appear justified; a title, for example, with two lines of text that must be centered, it will be justified). Leaving the format unset, is a recipe for disaster, for example in poetry text.

On the other hand, by establishing a default format, the user is given the opportunity to choose what he is seeing (which in principle would be optimal, with the text that should be centered being aligned to the center and the text that should be aligned to the right being aligned to the right) or, on the contrary, overwrite it.

But of course, all this is a matter of opinion.

[JSWolf]

I find the eBook looks cheap if it comes left justified.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I find the eBook looks cheap if it comes left justified.

I find it incredible that I'm writing this, but I agree with you.