Don't even try to justify your blogging!
I ran across an interesting discussion thread on the SitePoint message board, where someone posted the following question:
What are the thoughts on justifying the text with regards to readability?
Personally i prefer reading justified text. Don't ask me why, i just do!
The general consensus is that justifying text -- which results in the spacing of words being compressed or expanded so that the left and right margins of the text are even -- is a bad idea on websites.
Text justification is another in a long list of techniques that don't transition well from print to the web. Justification in print media works fairly well because (1) the layout software is smarter than a web browser and (2) the final version presented to the reader will look exactly as the creator envisioned. Even in print, however, the practice isn't universal. A quick sampling of magazines in my, um, reading room showed that less than half justify their text. The conventional wisdom seems to be that the ragged right margin makes it easier for the eye to jump to the next line of text, providing better readability.
Web browsers aren't consistent in how they interpret the instruction to justify text. Their algorithms for expanding or contracting space between words can yield strange results, especially for narrow columns or in text with longer than usual words. Also, to my knowledge, no browsers have the ability to automatically hyphenate words, and hyphenation is a critical technique for making justification work.
The result is text that might be neatly aligned at both margins, but is a mess in the middle. This can result in "rivers of white space" which, according to several comments in the above-referenced thread, can be quite distracting to readers with dyslexia, something I didn't know.
Despite the post title, I can't think of a single blogger who uses text justification, although I'm sure they're out there. If you've implemented a template on your blog that has justification built into it and you'd like to remove it, just look for the following coding in your CSS file: text-align: justify;. Either delete that snippet, or change it to text-align: left; and your blog will no longer be justified.
Of course, for some of us, that has nothing to do with the text. *ahem*
Of course, for some of us, that has nothing to do with the text. *ahem*
This is immediately where my mind went and I wanted to ask...what are you trying to say, exactly? :)
But as for text justification, I like the look of full justification in some situations - but so many planets and moons have to align to get it to look right that it's not worth the heartache, and I've never seen it look good on a website. I have a blog-friend who just changed templates and now she's RIGHT justified everything and I am considering dropping her a note (I'm guessing it's an accident) cause, well, um, it's really hard to read.
Posted by: beth at January 30, 2007 09:51 AMText justification can also look good in print advertisements, but I agree-- it has no place in web sites or blogs, where it distracts terribly.
Posted by: Stephen Shores at January 30, 2007 10:10 AMAnd BTW, I'll have to alert the pun police. :D
Posted by: Stephen Shores at January 30, 2007 10:14 AMEric, as a dang Yankee from back-east - and a liberal, to boot - I've often been told by my friends here, in the Tall City of West Texas, that my perceptions/opinions/politics/whatever are unjustifiable ...
Why should my text be any different?
:-)
Posted by: Jeff at January 30, 2007 10:24 AMIt is a great relief to know that there is no need to justify my blog, in either sense of the word. ;-)
Posted by: Gwynne at January 30, 2007 11:57 AMEr, um, ah... well, my site features justified text.
Most times, I don't give it much thought and assume that it looks okay. Occassionally, I've caught myself adjusting the wording of a sentence or paragraph just so it would visually flow a little better...
But this is a relatively new look for my site, so I'm not alltogether sure it's "for keeps." I'm up for some candid feedback - does the text formatting look tacky or would it even have been noticable had I not mentioned it?
Posted by: Rob O. at January 30, 2007 10:32 PMThis assumes that one reads anything. I look at the pictures.
Posted by: Wallace at January 30, 2007 10:36 PMAh, so you're the one! ;-)
Your blog does have one thing in its favor with regard to justified text and that is the width of the lines of text. Justification causes more problems with narrower columns, where the user agent doesn't have as much to work with in terms of spacing words.
On the other hand, if you're actually adjusting your wording to affect the visual layout, that might be a sign that you should consider a different approach.
And, on the third hand, wide lines of text have readability problems of their own. But that's another post for another day.
Posted by: Eric at January 30, 2007 10:40 PMOh, and I didn't answer your question. I don't think your layout looks "tacky." But, I'm not dyslexic, so I can't provide any feedback in that regard.
Posted by: Eric at January 30, 2007 10:41 PMAbout the publisher
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Sounds right to me. I've also read that a ragged right border is easier to read, and I know from personal experience that even print media (newspapers especially) get some pretty wonky results trying to justify short-ish lines across a column.
That said, I find it even more disconcerting when I find web pages that center all the text--whether by intent or due to ignorance of certain unfortunate CSS/doctype/browser combinations.
Posted by: Foo at January 30, 2007 09:43 AM