Formatting an eBook - Left justify or Justified

[GeoffC]

there are ways to adjust purchased books to how you would prefer them, after all an epub file is just a zipped folder and the contents are available for edit. the same for many other formats.

[alecE]

I much prefer full justification, but am comfortable with left justification. Preference is based on the visual attractiveness (to me) of a fully justified page, regardless of whether it's a paper page, computer screen or the display on my 505.

[dkb]

Full justification would be nice, but it often doesn't work well in ebooks. I hate it when there is this big space between words.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by simonroyle

Hi MR's,

I've been doing a lot (too much) reading about formatting eBooks. One comment I hear from "professionals" is that;

"nothing screams amateur like ragged right text"

What do you guys think? You're the readers - does it make a huge difference, and, more importantly, what do you prefer?

This verges on the Holy War about whether you should use sans serif fonts for body copy.

The preference varies with the text to be displayed.

For instance, I tend to read fiction fully justified. But I'm a computer geek, and a fair bit of what I read will have segments deliberately unjustified, and probably in a different mono-spaced font, as well. They will be snippets of program code. Attempting to justify that would be deadly, as there are all sorts of programs that rely on things like levels of indentation to be comprehensible.

The ebook viewer software I use makes justification user selectable, and it can be turned on or off as desired. So I'll be upset at anything that forces it. I may have reasons for wanting ragged right margins.

In my case, leave it left justified, and I'll make the fix here in the reader settings.
______
Dennis

[meredithwh]

I've been pushing the ragged-right margin for ages, without success. It's much easier to read, apparenty especially so for dyslexics. Fully justified text is a hangover from the old days of hand-setting type within metal formes. Time we did away with it.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by meredithwh

I've been pushing the ragged-right margin for ages, without success. It's much easier to read, apparently especially so for dyslexics. Fully justified text is a hangover from the old days of hand-setting type within metal formes. Time we did away with it.

I've never really seen a difference in ease of reading between justified and ragged right. But then, I haven't seen a difference is being able to read serif vs sans serif, and have been unimpressed by the arguments that serif is easier. Ease of reading has a lot more to do with how you handle the type than with whether it's serif or sans serif, and setting body copy is an art few have properly mastered.

But justification isn't just a hangover from metal forms. It originated in western publishing because books were laid out as single or double columns, and they were considered to look better if they were of even size. Early books created before movable type become common weren't perfectly justified. They were as close as the skill of the calligrapher creating the page allowed.

It's probably actually easier to set ragged right in hot type than to justify, as there's less fiddling with shims to lock the text on the line. And computerized typesetting and proportional fonts make justification a matter of a program setting when doing the markup.

The web is changing such perceptions in any case. Many sites use sans-serif by default (such as this one), and ragged right columns are common.
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Dennis

[guyanonymous]

http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/...ity/#alignment

When reading text on my ebook reader, I get less on a line than in your average paperback (I keep the font size a bit larger) and much prefer left-justified text as it's easier to read.

For me, fully justified text belongs in multi-column formats or graphic-designed based items such as brochures, text books, etc where format often has significant meaning (isolating text groups based on meaning/value/etc) or significant graphic impact (look, a bunch of rectangles on a page).

In your average novel, the right-justification serves no purpose beyond aesthetics when you're looking at the image of the page, not reading the words.

In fact, my understanding from past education, research into it, and a quick check online to confirm my memory, is that reading fully justified blocks of text is a slower process than left justified, as the eye isn't able to, as readily, move from line to line in the text - it doesn't have a reference point for which line is which as it does when there is varying amounts of white-space to the right of each line.

For ebook readers, until they do a good job of on-the-fly hyphenation of the languages involved, I'd sooner have them leave the right-justification part of the equation alone. If I'm the structure of the document is that important, I'm likely using a pdf anyway and zooming in, and the point is moot.

[SameOldStory]

Originally Posted by dkb

Full justification would be nice, but it often doesn't work well in ebooks. I hate it when there is this big space between words.

Originally Posted by meredithwh

I've been pushing the ragged-right margin for ages, without success. It's much easier to read, apparenty especially so for dyslexics. Fully justified text is a hangover from the old days of hand-setting type within metal formes. Time we did away with it.

I'm old enough to have actualy hand set type.

Dkb's problem is/was to some degree resolved by kerning and range kerning, where the words and the space between the letters of in a word were spaced out to help right justify the texl. And of course hyphenation, although I don't see it used that way any more.

Meredithwh, you're a hundred persent correct. For me at least. I am dyslexic, and the ragged right side of a page makes it both easyier and faster to read.

[ctol]

Interesting discussion here. Many valid points made on both sides of the argument. But let me play a little devil's advocate here for a moment; what about a poet or author whose work full justification would completely ruin the style of his/her work? I am speaking specifically of one of my favorite poets e.e. cummings. Would you folks not read his work in ebook form just because some of his poetry does not lend itself to either right or left justification.

If you are unfamiliar with his writing style to see what I mean, check out this ebook verson of some of his poetry to see what I mean.

http://www.archive.org/stream/100sel...ge/n5/mode/2up

[Ea]

Originally Posted by ctol

Interesting discussion here. Many valid points made on both sides of the argument. But let me play a little devil's advocate here for a moment; what about a poet or author whose work full justification would completely ruin the style of his/her work? I am speaking specifically of one of my favorite poets e.e. cummings. Would you folks not read his work in ebook form just because some of his poetry does not lend itself to either right or left justification.

With poetry there is a very good reason to follow the wish of the author. As things are now, I doubt I would wish to read such poetry on an e-reader. A much simpler example than yours; I tried to read Beowulf on my ipod recently, but the screen was too small and it just didn't work.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ctol

Interesting discussion here. Many valid points made on both sides of the argument. But let me play a little devil's advocate here for a moment; what about a poet or author whose work full justification would completely ruin the style of his/her work? I am speaking specifically of one of my favorite poets e.e. cummings. Would you folks not read his work in ebook form just because some of his poetry does not lend itself to either right or left justification.

Full justification is deadly for any poetry. And I've read cummings. Some of his stuff should not be flush left, let alone fully justified.

You face the issue of how precise a control the reader provides over just where the individual words get placed on a page. Some forms, like "concrete" poetry, may be effectively impossible unless you use a PDF file.

And if typography is important, there are further compromises. I had a discussion with a friend who is a DTP specialist for a major trade publisher, and made it clear to her management that she wants to be involved in ebook production. "If the book designer specifies 11 pt Monotype Bembo on 12 for the body copy, the ebook reader doesn't have Monotype Bembo, and won't have that fine a control over line spacing. What you will do will be only an approximation based on what the reader can do, and what the reader can do will be constrained by the platform it runs on ." She got it.

You also face the issues involved when fonts must change in the book, like books on programming where the author's text is in a justified proportional font, but snippets of program code are in an unjustified monospaced font where indentation is critical. If the ebook viewer can't do that, you really don't want to try to read the book on it.

Web designers have been wrestling with this for years, as what the viewer sees is constrained by what fonts are installed on their machines, and browsers are programmed with defaults that the user should have as fallbacks if the font the designer specifies isn't present.

To a large extent, book design becomes a casualty when ebooks are in question. I expect those constraints to ease as the technology improves, but there are still a lot of cases where you either use a PDF or don't read it in electronic form.
______
Dennis

[James_Wilde]

(Originally posted in the Iriver forum where it aroused little interest!)

I'm looking at the beta epub of my first book on my Iriver, and I must say I'm disturbed by the occasional long gaps at the right end of lines, since I have used left alignment. I've looked at some of the other books on my Iriver, and every one appears to be justified, and only rarely is there a noticeable gap in the middle or serious hyphenation. In fact, I haven't noticed any hyphenation.

In the course of searching for tips on this on the forum, I've discovered that one can apparently turn justification on and off on the Kindle <spit > and I wonder if anyone has found a similar option on the Iriver. I haven't.

I'm also wondering how justification can work in an epub book, since the composer doesn't know in what screen format and font the book is going to be displayed. I know that all word processors worth their salt can do conditional hyphenation, so that the word I just used can be hy-phen-a-ted in one of several places, more or less as I just wrote it, and the hyphen appears at the actual point of break. But do all word processors use the same symbol for a conditional hyphenation, and do all e-readers understand that. And how about Calibre and Sigil, how would they handle it?

I managed to find this thread in the forum about justified vs left alignment, and the readers seem to be more or less evenly split in their preferences with perhaps a slight advantage for justified, based only on the first page or so.

So, how does one fix justification in an epub book,

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by James_Wilde

So, how does one fix justification in an epub book,

text-align (perhaps) in the xthml/css?

I have no purchased epubs so I can't confirm that, but the option exists in the coding.

[James_Wilde]

Great, thanks, Geoff. How about the hyphenation? Must that be done at the raw text stage or can e-book readers cope?

[GeoffC]

Ack.. beyond me, I'm afraid ....

This really needs someone else to pop in and advise you - or try looking in the ePub forum.