May 3, 2007 Justified Text Versus Ragged-Right Text
In most printed text that I read, whether in books, magazines, or newspapers, the margins are justified. Here’s how James Felici, The Complete Manual of Typography (2003), defines “justified margins”:
justified margins A text alignment in which the type in each line of a column completely fills the measure. This creates straight, (usually) vertical margins on both left and right. To achieve justified margins, a composition program must flex the spaces on a line, compressing them or expanding them.
The conventional alternative is a ragged right margin. Here, again, is Felici:
ragged right A text margin treatment in which all lines begin hard against the left-hand margin but are allowed to end short of the right-hand margin. On lines that do not fully fill the measure (nearly all of them), any leftover space is deposited along the right-hand margin. This creates an irregular margin along the right side of the text column.
Although as a general matter I have no problem reading justified text, I dislike it intensely in word-processed documents, including contracts, because I find that it makes them much harder to read. If you wish to do a quick readability test of your own, here is a document with justified, one-inch-margin, 12-point Times New Roman text; here is the same document with a ragged right margin.
I’ve long wondered what renders justified harder to read. I used to think that the problem was that by normal typographic standards, word-processed documents on letter-sized paper contain a relatively high number of characters. (That’s the explanation I offer in MSCD 12.3.)
An unjustified line of 12-point Times New Roman on letter-sized paper with one-inch margins (the standard setup at law firms) contains on average between 77 and 80 characters. That’s more than any recommended limits I’ve seen. For example, Felici says that “the optimal line length is nine or ten words (figure an average of 5 1/2 characters a word),” in other words around 50 to 55 characters. (By the way, I’m not taking into account two-column documents: after flirting with a two-column format, I decided, with the help of some prodding by readers, that it wouldn’t be viable for contracts.)
The high per-line character count in contracts and other word-processed legal documents certainly makes them harder to read. I also thought that because of the high per-line character count, the eye relies that much more on a ragged right margin to help you not lose track of which line you’re on. That help wouldn’t be available when the margins are justified.
But I now think that’s an insufficient explanation for what makes justified text harder to read. For one thing, I find text with justified margins annoying in word-processed documents even when the per-line character count is within recommended limits, as in a two-column document. See if you agree with me: here is a two-column document with justified, one-inch-margin, 12-point Times New Roman text; here is the same document with a ragged right margin.
So if the per-line character count isn’t an adequate explanation, what is? For insight, I consulted Ellen Lupton. Ellen is director of the MFA program in graphic design at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore and curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City. She’s also author of Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students. It’s a very informative and wonderfully designed book.
Here’s what Ellen had to say:
The reason that text with justified margins looks bad in a single-column Word document is that subtle word-spacing and letter-spacing algorithms are needed to make justified text look “good,” and Word’s aren’t up the job. So it’s not really the column width that’s the problem, but rather limitations in the software. Many beautiful books are set in single-column justified pages, but they have been properly typeset. Word documents simply should not be justified.
After chewing that over, I’ve come to see that Ellen’s explanation makes sense. When it’s done properly, with good letter spacing, word spacing, and hyphenation, justified text is pleasing to the eye. And it also saves space, because playing with spacing and hyphenation allows you to fit more words on a page. But doing it properly requires a careful designer using a professional page-layout program. That’s a far cry from creating a document using Word or other word-processing software.
Another problem with justified text is that it’s prone to “rivers.” According to Felici, “Rivers occur when word spaces stack one above the other in successive lines of type, creating the appearance of fissuers running through the text.” But rivers have no bearing on whether justified text makes legal documents harder to read: as Ellen notes in her book, it’s narrow columns of justified text that are particularly prone to rivers, and the text in single-column legal documents certainly isn’t narrow.
Does justified text have anything going for it for purposes of word-processed documents? Well, its defenders will tell you that it looks “professional.” But it’s a phony professionalism, in that it comes at the expense of readability, which should be the first priority of any kind of typesetting, including word processing.
So I recommend that you stop using full justification in your word-processed documents, just as you’ve stopped using two spaces after punctuation.
You have stopped using two spaces, haven’t you?
May 3, 2007 at 6:15 am
I completely agree with your comments on justification but have had a hard time convincing other people I work with! I am still using two spaces after periods.
May 3, 2007 at 6:24 am
I was actually accused by another lawyer (in friendly jest, but with due seriousness regarding the underlying point) of being a ‘freak’ because I was advocating the unnatural practice of one space. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
May 3, 2007 at 7:58 am
I find the best way to convince people to abandon the double space between sentences is to ask them to look at virtually any book, magazine, or newspaper, and they’ll find that professionals use only one.
I’m glad you’re covering these issues for your community, Kenneth. As a typographer I’ve struggled to help folks see the ragged-right light for years. Perhaps only when newspapers and other documents start to change, so will the rest of us. And they are changing.
May 3, 2007 at 8:10 am
Ken, one lawyerly thing to note about justification and word processing software… most people are not expert users, thus their settings when creating justified docs go beyond creating “rivers” to creating doubt. The problem comes up when I am reviewing a doc and I see odd spacing; my first inclination is to think that there is a word missing, then I slow down to search for what it might be. To those who think justified docs look professional - phooey! BTW, I still struggle with the 1 or 2 space issue after punctuation, and believe that the latter contributes to readability by creating (however unnatural) breaks between sentences. As usual, thanks for your insights….
May 3, 2007 at 8:54 am
I’ve found that some lawyers/clients seem to like justification for the following reasons:
1) It looks professional;
2) It looks like it ought to be less negotiable; and
3) It reduces readability.
I think that the last two reasons are amusing and counter intuitive. Though, it makes some sense. If you justify the text, and scan it in as a pdf (so that the contract is a big image rather than text), it raises the costs of negotiating on the other side.
There are lots of those silly tricks out there too. One big company purposefully inserts actual tabs on each line of a paragraph that typically would be indented. That way if you make any changes, it become god awful ugly. That is, change one work and the tabs are all out of whack.
May 3, 2007 at 9:09 am
Some lawyers told me that they prefer justified text as it makes it impossible for a party to erase a word at the end of a line.
May 3, 2007 at 9:52 am
Martin: The lawyers you spoke with have lost their ability to balance risk against the cost of measures taken to combat that risk. The risk that someone would seek to perpetrate fraud by erasing from a contract a word or two at the end of a line is, for a number of reasons, entirely remote. It would be ridiculous to seek to eliminate that risk by inflicting justified text on every reader of every contract they draft. Ken
May 3, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Couldn’t agree more with you on this stuff. Once you see the difference, how can you go back?
A buddy of mine who is an industrial designer told me about the justification thing years ago, back when I was using Wordstar on Sanyo PC clone with two 5.25 floppy drives.
At the time, justified text was a novelty, and in my youth and inexperience I thought that the 12 pt courier of the daisywheel printer looked pretty good that way (maybe even professional).
But in retrospect it looks horrible, it is hard to read, and at least to me it actually says the exact opposite of “professional.” It says “person who doesn’t care enough about their craft to understand the tools they use every day, their limitations, and the skill it takes to do it the right way or not do it at all.”
I’m not a professional designer. I don’t know about leading, etc. So for most things, I just try to stick to ragged right with one space after the punctuation, Serif fonts for the body, Sans Serif fonts for the headings (if any), and leave it at that.
Seems to work pretty well. Along with some of your formatting suggestions, it yields a pretty streamlined document. It may look a little plain on first blush, but it it’s actually nice to read and work with.
That said, it sure can be a tough sell to people sometimes.
Actually, a lot of stuff in your book is that way. Much of it makes sense to me, and I agree with it. But I also spent a number of years teaching legal writing, so I kind of already had an interest in these sorts of issues.
A lot of other folks don’t, and it’s a struggle to get them to excise all the unnecessary shalls out of the contract, etc.
Any thoughts on how you approach that issue in real life? Obviously, it’s relatively easy to put that stuff into practice when creating the first draft, but it’s harder in the other direction, especially if your client doesn’t have a bottomless pit of money to spend.
May 3, 2007 at 1:57 pm
j-lon: Soon I’ll do a blog post that addresses the question in your final paragraph. Ken
May 4, 2007 at 7:38 am
Nice column. I can offer one more reason some lawyers use justified text: it’s an easy way to shorten a document that is creeping over the page limit for an appellate brief. Yes, I agree that good editing is a much better approach—and it will be the only approach as soon as more courts start imposing a word-count limit rather than a page limit.
I stopped using two spaces after the ends of sentences after reading a nifty little book called The PC is Not a Typewriter.
May 4, 2007 at 10:57 am
I also do not like justified right text in contracts because it interferes with readability, whatever the reason. I still use 2 spaces after sentences, mostly due to muscle memory. Try as I might, my thumb whacks that space bar twice. I’m wondering, though, why does your listing of comments have justified right text?!!!!
May 4, 2007 at 11:21 am
Kathleen: Excuse me while I wipe the egg off my face: I didn’t notice that the comments have justified margins! I’ll try to fix that. Ken
May 7, 2007 at 1:33 am
[…] article about the difficulty of reading fully justified text created on a word processor. As the linked article at Adams Drafting notes: Does justified text have anything going for it for purposes of […]
May 7, 2007 at 4:53 am
[…] few days ago, in a comment to my post on justified text, reader j-lon had, in part, this to say: Actually, a lot of stuff in your book is [a tough sell to […]
May 7, 2007 at 4:06 pm
I am thrilled to find a resource to back up my own dislike of full justification in briefs. I’ve always known it throws off the letter spacing, but thought I was alone in my distaste for the way it looks.
I confess that my habit is to use two spaces; I’ll plead muscle memory as well.
June 5, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Ken,
I agree for the most part with your article, but cannot understand how anyone can claim that justified text saves space, or allows cramming more text into the same space.
That’s just wrong, when writing with current text editors. Perhaps in typeset publications, where sub-character spacing is used, this may be true, but I don’t know of one text editor that uses sub-character spacing. Do you?
All justification is achieve by leaving extra character spaces between words so the end of the last word will align with the right margin. Operative words: ‘extra space’, not extra text.
The issue of hyphenation is NOT a feature of justification, just an additional setting, which can also apply to ragged-right margin (or left-aligned) text.
June 5, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Claude: I was happy to pass on Ellen Lupton’s suggestion that when done properly, justified text allows you to fit more words on a page. But I’m certainly not qualified to offer any opinions on that score. And more importantly, it’s irrelevant for purposes of anyone who does their typesetting using standard word-processing software. Ken
July 11, 2007 at 11:01 am
Donald Knuth took about ten years of studying typography and writing the TeX system to overcome many of the problems you mention with justified text.
His justification algorithms produce much higher quality documents than what Word can produce. Output of justified text is simply beautiful.
TeX also supports proper kerning, ligatures, small caps and robust mathematical notation.
See here for some examples and more discussion : http://nitens.org/taraborelli/latex
Also a showcase of documents :
http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/
Just because some software can’t produce readable justifiable text does not mean the concept should be abandoned. Just use good typesetting software. (La)TeX is still the best solution and has a variety of packages for formatting articles, thesis, newsletters, etc.
July 28, 2007 at 9:06 pm
[…] article about the difficulty of reading fully justified text created on a word processor. As the linked article at Adams Drafting notes: Does justified text have anything going for it for purposes of […]
August 2, 2007 at 7:02 pm
[…] article about the difficulty of reading fully justified text created on a word processor.? As the linked article at Adams Drafting notes: Does justified text have anything going for it for purposes of […]