Why won't the Kindle do proper full justification?

[bfollowell]

Does anyone have any idea why the Kindle won't do proper full justification? All of my ebooks are setup to display this way and look fine on the screen and on the Kindle Previewer but they're not fully justified on my K3. They're just "mostly" justified. Is this a known issue? I won't rule out that I'm doing something wrong on my end but I really don't think that's the case.

99% of my text will be fully justified but one or two lines per screen will wind up being left justified while the rest of the paragraph, the rest of the page is fine. It's really strange.

I seriously doubt that no one has experienced this issue but, if that's the case, I'll be glad to post screenshots of what I'm talking about.

Thanks.

- Byron

[Mike L]

The problem lies not so much in justification as in hyphenation.

The Kindle software does not automatically hyphenate long words. It might therefore need to force long words onto the next line. If, as a result, the previous line (the one that would have contained the hyphen) is unusually short, the software doesn't attempt to justify it.

This might be annoying, but it's probably the right choice. You get a ragged line ending, rather than a justified line with a large amount of white space in the middle of it.

The problem is particularly bad where two words are joined by an em dash with no spaces between. The software sees these as a single word, and so the above behaviour kicks in.

At least, that's my understanding of the problem. If I've got it wrong, no doubt someone will correct me.

[DMSmillie]

Heh... snap! While you were typing your post above, Mike, I was typing the following reply in response to Byron mentioning this issue in another thread.

Originally Posted by DMSmillie

You're right that this is also a known issue with the Kindle, Byron. It does do full justification, but it seems to be that, when a line of text would have to be stretched beyond a certain point (i.e. when the gaps between words would have to be expanded beyond some limit coded into the Kindle's operating software), the Kindle simply dispenses with trying to justify that line, but continues to apply full justification to the rest of the paragraph. It's an issue that is more usually handled, in word processors and DTP applications, by enabling "on the fly" hyphenation, but, so far, automatic hyphenation isn't a feature available on the Kindle. So, for now, we end up with occasional lines of text that aren't fully justified - probably preferable to having occasional lines of text with huge gaps between the words.

[bfollowell]

Thanks for the responses guys. That tells me what I needed to know. I felt this was probably a known issue and just wanted to make certain I wasn't doing something wrong. It isn't all that big a deal or anything. It just looked strange and I knew something wasn't quite right.

Also, it seemed really strange that, when I checked out these files on the Kindle Previewer, which is basically just a Kindle emulator, I see totally different behavior. The same lines of text that are not fully justified on my K3, look perfectly justified on the previewer. I thought the whole idea behind the previewer program was to be able to see how a particular file would look on a Kindle. That was throwing me off a little.

Thanks again for the info.

- Byron

[DMSmillie]

Originally Posted by bfollowell

Also, it seemed really strange that, when I checked out these files on the Kindle Previewer, which is basically just a Kindle emulator, I see totally different behavior. The same lines of text that are not fully justified on my K3, look perfectly justified on the previewer. I thought the whole idea behind the previewer program was to be able to see how a particular file would look on a Kindle. That was throwing me off a little.

That's interesting - I'd never noticed that. You're quite right - in most respects, the Previewer shows an accurate simulation of what a book will look like on a Kindle. I never noticed that it didn't replicate this behaviour re justified text - thanks for pointing that out, Byron.

[Histerius]

Kindle Previewer is not 100% accurate, I discovered that when I moved some books from my PC to Kindle, one of them looked quite different on real deal. But it's accurate enough for fast check.

[chyron8472]

Originally Posted by bfollowell

They're just "mostly" justified.

There's big difference between mostly justified, and all justified.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by bfollowell

Thanks for the responses guys. That tells me what I needed to know. I felt this was probably a known issue and just wanted to make certain I wasn't doing something wrong. ...

BTW, this issue can be reduced (both occur less frequently and be less severe when it occurs) by using a smaller character size.

The Kindle seems to justify using only word spacing, leaving the letter spacing unaltered. When there are more words on a line it has more spaces to use for the adjustment. Also, when it is forced to leave a line ragged, the ragged line is shorter by a smaller percentage of the screen width.

[Barty]

It's kinda dumb, but even when the word is already hyphenated, like jack-of-all-trades, the kindle won't break up the word but instead puts it on the next line, leaving the previous ragged.

[vermontcathy]

In case anyone's curious, the K2 had the current "mostly justified" behavior prior to version 2.5. Then it was "justified at all costs". If you had some big words, or a web address, it looked totally ridiculous because of the huge spaces. At some point on K2 (I think) and now on the K3, it went back to the way it had been (mostly justified). I prefer mostly justified. Huge spaces distracted me more than an occasional ragged right margin.

[chamekke]

I've seen the same 'problem' too, although careful examination of the lines with ragged-right-margin cleared up the reason for it.

They say that left-aligned (ragged right margin) text is supposed to be generally more readable than full justification. This is merely a nice-to-have, but wouldn't it be cool if you could set the Kindle to display left-aligned rather than justified, the way you can in Word documents?

[Valentino]

Originally Posted by chamekke

but wouldn't it be cool if you could set the Kindle to display left-aligned rather than justified, the way you can in Word documents?

While I haven't tried it since I like full justification, there is a way to enable it in this thread.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99661

[chamekke]

Ooh, much karma to you - thank you! *runs off to look*

[pboss]

I prefer full justification but would not put off buying a book if it was left justified. BTW it's not even a consistent justification. Try to play with the screen size (not font size) and you will see what I mean.

[Mike L]

One thing that publishers, editors or authors could do is to insert a space on either side of a dash. Most often, they represent a dash by two consecutive hyphens, with no space between the hyphens and words. The software then interprets the word on each side, plus the hyphens themselves, as a single word, which then gets pushed to the next line.

As an example:

He set out on the long journey to the outpatients department.
He decided to take his
umbrella--recognising that it would 
rain--together with a flask of hot coffee and a muffin.

Do you see what I mean? "umbrella--recognising" is treated as a single word, as is "rain--together", resulting in ragged text. A space on either side of each "--" would have fixed that.