Tag Archive for 'Typography'

Typography: K2 and Unjustified Justification

Why does K2 come with the post content justified by default?

It looks crappy.

Though I guess if you want a sidebar on the right, having justified text is nice since you get a clean, uniform break between text and sidebar (rather than the jagged space created by left-justification). But I’d say it’s not worth the resulting mutilation of post content (that is, when justification is used). So I might try switching the sidebar over to the left side if I can find some time to play with it.

 

Justified text

Justified text is set flush with the left and right margins. Page layout programs use a hyphenation dictionary to check for and apply hyphenation at each line’s end and then adjust word spacing throughout the line. But even with sophisticated page layout software, justified text blocks often suffer from poor spacing and excessive hyphenation and require manual refinement. This level of control is not even a remote possibility on Web pages. The most recent browser versions (and CSS) support justified text, but it is achieved by crude adjustments to word spacing. Also, Web browsers are unlikely to offer automatic hyphenation any time soon, another “must” for properly justified text. For the foreseeable future, the legibility of your Web documents will suffer if you set your text in justified format.

[From TYPOGRAPHY: Alignment @ Web Style Guide 2.0]

 




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