Why would a traditionally-publishedīook forgo the tried and true technology of good-looking pages? #typography #web » 10 reactionsįirst, full justification is not merely a matter of mimicry it's a matter of usability. And I’m reading a Salman Rushdieīook published by Penguin which uses no hyphenation. Have built hyphenation into a reading device. Something I noticed right away when I first tried one out. The lack of hyphenationīut they also have their drawbacks: code size and execution time.īTW: it isn’t just the web that suffers from hyphen-less justification. Will appear, you shouldn’t use full justification on the web. In a single column of text in the middle of a browser window,įull justification isn’t gaining you much, and brings you pain in the form of loose lines.Įxcept in specialized cases, or where you know very clearly what type of content Text is a good echo of the right edge of the paper, or of the left edge of the next column But content on the web rarely appears in a constrained rectangle.įull justification in print is appealing partly because the justified right edge of the Books and newspapers use full justification, so we try toĭo it on the web also. I think full justification is one of those technology hold-overs: the new technology This as other non-word content appears in running text, such as function names. Occasionally URLs appear in paragraphs, and these are very large “words” thatĬompletely screw up the line before them. Here are some examples from the OpenID news for February 2008: Naturally, and they don’t have to be stretched too far.īut web browsers don’t hyphenate. By breaking words into smaller chunks, the lines can be filled more

In traditional typography, hyphenation is used to reduce the need to make loose The line of text is then “too loose”, and interrupts the flow of reading. The goal is to get an evenly filledīecause full justification involves stretching word spaces, if a line has toīe stretched too much, the spaces become wide enough to be noticeable white blobs The rectangle, something they call “color”. They care about the evenness of the type within

But typographers care about more than just The straight right edge is a strong visual element on the page, and canĪdd to the controlled overall look. Typographers use full justification to get an elegant-looking block of Full justification on the web is usually a bad idea.

Fully justify text in html