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.

[DNSB]

Whereas I prefer left-justified.

I find justification to be almost painful to read on devices/apps that do not implement micro-spacing/micro-justification/microtypography. KOReader, for instance, has it's ability to tweak between word spacing and between characters in a word spacing but comparing to Microtype with LaTeX, it just lacks that finished look. A river runs through it comes to mind.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Whereas I prefer left-justified.

I find justification to be almost painful to read on devices/apps that do not implement micro-spacing/micro-justification/microtypography. KOReader, for instance, has it's ability to tweak between word spacing and between characters in a word spacing but comparing to Microtype with LaTeX, it just lacks that finished look. A river runs through it comes to mind.

I can’t stand those rivers of white space…

I’ll take left justified all day long… when my eye gets to the end of the line it automatically goes to the next line. There is no concern about any “wasted space”. If you are a person who likes hyphenated words , and has a device that presents them well (in your reading language) that space is non existent anyway.

There also isn’t any “premium” or “professional” look to a justified text like there used to be when typographers had to manually set the type to fill the whole line … it’s just a css setting, or click of a setting, now. The only “value” to justified text is to differentiate a section from the surrounding text. eg. A snippet of a magazine article embedded in the story.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

I can’t stand those rivers of white space…

I’ll take left justified all day long… when my eye gets to the end of the line it automatically goes to the next line. There is no concern about any “wasted space”. If you are a person who likes hyphenated words , and has a device that presents them well (in your reading language) that space is non existent anyway.

There also isn’t any “premium” or “professional” look to a justified text like there used to be when typographers had to manually set the type to fill the whole line … it’s just a css setting, or click of a setting, now. The only “value” to justified text is to differentiate a section from the surrounding text. eg. A snippet of a magazine article embedded in the story.

I've found that since using ChareInk6SP instead of ChareInk, I have a lot less hyphens and the rivers of space in justified text is not an issue. The SP version has a smaller space.

[theducks]

Remember Paper Books?
You took them the way the publisher delivered them. Or you left them on the stores shelf.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

I can’t stand those rivers of white space…

I’ll take left justified all day long… when my eye gets to the end of the line it automatically goes to the next line. There is no concern about any “wasted space”. If you are a person who likes hyphenated words , and has a device that presents them well (in your reading language) that space is non existent anyway.

There also isn’t any “premium” or “professional” look to a justified text like there used to be when typographers had to manually set the type to fill the whole line … it’s just a css setting, or click of a setting, now. The only “value” to justified text is to differentiate a section from the surrounding text. eg. A snippet of a magazine article embedded in the story.

Linotypes had variable 'space bands' that took up small slack. We had a selection of space mats available when more fill was needed.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

I can’t stand those rivers of white space…

Partly why having read for ages now on 8″ Sage I'd not go back to 6″. So for going out I'd take a bag! With smaller margins than PW3 / Kindle and the nearly twice the screen area fully justified text isn't too bad, even without hyphens. I dislike hyphens and they are only acceptable to me if occasional and done properly.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Partly why having read for ages now on 8″ Sage I'd not go back to 6″. So for going out I'd take a bag! With smaller margins than PW3 / Kindle and the nearly twice the screen area fully justified text isn't too bad, even without hyphens. I dislike hyphens and they are only acceptable to me if occasional and done properly.

Yeah, my iphone 15 pro max has a 6.7" screen and I read in landscape mode almost exclusively. But, I find I'm slowly increasing the font size over the years which tends to create those rivers of white space again regardless of the font type...

When I do use justified text, as mentioned above, it is usually when I am inserting some other text that I want to differentiate from normal text. Then I have used a <div> and I style the paragraphs within that div as justified. That way the normal text has a left-alignment and the inset is visually distinctive.


Screenshot from Laurence E. Dahners'
Antigravity, Book 19 in the Ell Donsaii Story

h3::before {
  display: block;
  background-image: url(../Images/img_ChDiv.png);
  background-size: 1em 1.5em;
  width: 1em;
  height: 1.5em;
  margin: 1em auto 0.5em;
  content: "";
}

p {
  text-indent: 1.2em;
  margin: 0;
}

p.first {
  text-indent: 0;
  font-size: 1em;
  clear: both;
}

p.first::first-letter {
  font-family: serif;
  font-size: 2em;
  font-weight: bold;
  float: left;
  margin: -0.1em 0.1em;
}

p.first::first-line {
  font-variant: small-caps;
  font-size: 1.15em;
}

div.news {
  margin: 2em auto;
  border-top: 1px solid black;
  border-bottom: 1px solid black;
  width: 90vw;
}

div.news p {
  margin: 0.5em;
  font-size: 0.9em;
  font-family: serif;
  text-indent: 0;
  text-align: justify;
}

[Turtle91]

Here is an example of the difference between Justified (left column) and Left-Aligned (right column) text.

On larger screens the rivers of white space are less noticeable, but on smaller screens (most people read ebooks on their phones), especially with larger font, it is very noticeable. It can even get so bad that there are only two words on a given line!!


This screenshot is also from Antigravity

[Quoth]

Yes, unless you've superhero eyes to read in 6pt or smaller, fully justified is terrible in portrait on a phone. I still have a working 4.3″ phone but I don't test on it now. I had the cute 4.7″ super long aspect eink for taking out but gave it away and decided on a shoulder bag for the 8″ ereader. I have a bigger one should I decide to take out the 11" laptop and/or the 14.25″ tablet.

Does anyone sell 18" to 19" laptops? I saw one once with a dual 15.6" screen. The 2nd screen slid out to the side to tile. Sadly my lovely 23″ LG screen isn't very portable.

Media (esp The Guardian) loves to call streaming or broadcast or DVD/BD content for the "small screen". Compared to the back of the cinema most people's screen are now bigger. A 55″ is now cheaper in real terms than a basic 1950 radio was then. Few have less than 42″ now and some have larger. Home projectors are now essentially dead (noise, cost and resolution compared to 55″ 4K HDR TV).

I'm a fan of big screens. Except for Solitaire. I think 6″ 4:3 is good for that, but those seem like dodos now.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

Here is an example of the difference between Justified (left column) and Left-Aligned (right column) text.

On larger screens the rivers of white space are less noticeable, but on smaller screens (most people read ebooks on their phones), especially with larger font, it is very noticeable. It can even get so bad that there are only two words on a given line!!

Attachment 216977
This screenshot is also from Antigravity

What program is that that's not going hyphenation? You'd have less gaps if the program did hyphenation.

[j.p.s]

Are there any devices that force unjustified when the book (properly!) does not specify anything at all about body text. If so, what are they?

Also, "left justified" strikes me as a very poor name unless ragged left is common enough to need a name. What is lacking about "unjustified"? Is there something special about starting each line at the same horizontal location?