Text-Align Preferences

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Lethe
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Text-Align Preferences

Post by Lethe »

So, since I enjoy reading discussions in this part of the forum and like hearing about other people's experiences... What do you all think about justified content text
  • a) when designing your own shrines,
    b) when visiting other shrines?
A while ago, I was reading up on the whole "justified versus left-aligned text" thing, and a lot of people on the internet wrote that unlike books and text documents, most websites ought to have left-aligned text for easier reading, as unlike the former, websites usually don't have hyphenation to break up words at linebreaks, which results in white space of differing width in each line. The articles said that that white space can negatively affect visual orientation and reading flow, if I recall correctly.

And it seemed to me as though all the articles I had dug up were a much "clearer" case than things like "sans-serif versus serif content fonts" (which can go either way, so I don't care :|), which is why I switched to left-aligned content text at the beginning of the year; I figured since my sites tend to be very wordy, I should do my best to aid other people's reading process.

I love including floating images to the left and right of my content text though, so my biggest difficulty with switching to left-align is the awkwardness of the text around images that float to the right. I've mostly got used to it by now, even though it's still a struggle each time. (Not to mention how mobile devices may display text differently anyway, so the text would float differently around the images depending on the device... Then again, most of these sites aren't optimal for mobile reading anyway.) Truth to be told, I vastly prefer the looks of justified content text on my own sites because I like the uniform look - all the more so if a layout header is centered. When visiting other people's sites, I like both, and probably don't even take conscious note of it! I've also never had an issue reading justified text as far as the white space is concerned (letter-spacing in the content text is a different matter).

In a recent layout revamp of mine, I left in "text-align: justify" from the previous layout and didn't take note of it - now that I have, I realize why I like the looks of the layout so much, not having used justified text for quite some time. And this was a layout that could even stand not having justified text, as there are no content images.

Anyway, I didn't say all this to premeditate the outcome of the input in this topic, but so you know why I'm bringing this up in the first place. =x I'm really curious how everyone else thinks about this (it's okay to give your honest opinion!), and whether a) and b) differ from one another, and whether anyone has difficulties reading justified text.
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dubiousdisc
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Re: Text-Align Preferences

Post by dubiousdisc »

You already said a lot of it - while for example in books justified text is done all the time and is no problem, right now CSS lacks the tools to make it be visually helpful rather than visually confusing. We're getting there I think - I remember reading about some recent attempts with CSS hyphenation - but, right now, if I see any long paragraph of justified text in a site...I actually can't read it at all. I don't even bother, it's just a big blur to me. I use FireBug to turn it into text-align: left because I cannot parse it.

What were the cases with your own sites that you were talking about?
Lethe
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Re: Text-Align Preferences

Post by Lethe »

Thank you so much for your input, dubiousdisc! That's what I figured: Something I don't have the slightest difficulty with may be a big deal to others, and I can't know without asking! I've seen Wordpress plugins, I think, that add hyphenation, but that's it. I don't know FireBug, but I'm glad that option exists for you - I hope it exists for others on Chrome and other browsers too! :O

Here are some examples from my own sites where I'm not satisfied (to be fair, I'd not be happy with too much white space either and would rephrase sentences to make them smaller at least): one two

It's jarring to me strictly on my own sites because I do both left- and right-floating images, and then you can see the differences right away: For left-float, the text would be in a straight line (start), for right-float, the text would be in some zig zag (end). For my own browser, I can "cheat" a bit by rephrasing some things to avoid huge gaps in the zig zags, but I understand that other browsers and devices render things differently.

As said, by now, I've got somewhat used to it, so it's not that big of a deal to me anymore, but I think it's still interesting to know what other people think as creators and as visitors, and in terms of readability. :) And I'm glad to hear that reader solutions exist in the case of justified content text.

ALSO, I'd like to stress that I only go eeeeeh at this while working on my own shrines; I don't have the same reaction to people using left-aligned text with right-float images, I probably don't even really notice it!! So I'm wondering too whether that's how it is for others. XD
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Masao
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Re: Text-Align Preferences

Post by Masao »

I'm kind of torn on this, because on the one hand, having huge word spacing in justified text is really annoying to read, but I also find left or right align content a bit distracting.

On my own layouts I usually find a medium by adjusting my content width so that it's wide enough to avoid that crazy spacing issue, and rewrite my sentences so that no large words cause that at any point, or manually insert a hyphen if rewording doesn't help. But I usually find increasing content width helps a lot. It's also a part of the reason I usually make a layout first before I do any serious writing, to make sure the content looks good in the layout (I've gone back and edited layout images just because parts of it conflicted with the content text).

I did find this javascript plugin that dynamically adds hyphens in your content to best adjust word spacing to be as consistent as possible, so that might be a solution, since CSS hyphens isn't widely adapted right now (Chrome has no support, while funny enough IE/Edge excels).
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Aku
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Re: Text-Align Preferences

Post by Aku »

Weirdly enough I've been working on some left-aligned designs lately for text heavier sites (more on why, below, I guess), but in the past I've always used justified text for purely aesthetic reasons. Sometimes, left-aligning even the most appropriately sized text areas will make for a really weird rag (basically, the "uneven" margin on the right side of text), and I think this is why a lot of people lean towards justifying text, without even really knowing the typographic reasoning behind why left align is weird to them. (Counter argument that's been said here already: justifying text can also create really weird word spacing that is almost just as criminal as the ugly rags... so like, pick your poison I guess lol.)

While the rag is something that you can fix in print (trust me, text in editorial print is very carefully "broken apart" by typesetters to make sure it has a nice rag--my typography teachers used to draw lines down the rag during crit to show people how bad they were), it's not so much possible on the web without editing your copy. Even then, it's not possible to control: take into consideration that not all browsers are created equally, not everyone may be viewing it on the device you like, or in the font that you like, or maybe even at the size that you want them to.

All that being said, there is definitely a reason left aligned text is I guess "optically" superior and used more often (even in print): the undulations of space in your right margin often make it easier to find the next line. You get lost less. But I don't think there's anything wrong with justified text either--it's definitely more suited to print because of how poorly it can work on web, but there are places where others (and myself) have used it and it doesn't really bother me too much. I think there is a lot of desire to make typography work online the way we do in books or in magazines and I think that's wrong, it's not really embracing the medium for what it is.

At the end of the day, legibility is going to be what's most important! There are things about typography online that bothers me much more than whether it's justified or not (letter & line spacing, really huge paragraph width, text size, etc etc) so I think that as long as those things are on point, how you've set the paragraph doesn't bother me too much!
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Camy
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Re: Text-Align Preferences

Post by Camy »

I'm used to seeing both, though justify being more used in the roleplaying communities I'm part of hosted on forums. I use it for post layout orders to make it neat since it's seen as such.

Would be great to see it evolve though to show better on the web.
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dubiousdisc
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Re: Text-Align Preferences

Post by dubiousdisc »

Lethe: Meeeep the imgur links don't seem to work at least right now. I'll check later.

But yeah, depending on the amount of text both have their drawbacks. :( I'd rather prioritize legibility over aesthetics however, which is why I'd lean towards left-align for now.

Masao, thanks for the link to the Hyphenator! I'll be playing with it in the future. :D
Robin
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Re: Text-Align Preferences

Post by Robin »

I generally work with left-aligned text on my websites as the default, because the giant gaps in words and sentences that are caused by justified alignment drive me CRRRAAAAZZZYYY (it's one reason I don't read newspapers--I hate trying to read sentences that look like "this morning, [random person] w a s just going about their b u s i n e s s when...").

(Admittedly, I do like the nice neat straight margins of justified, but readability just plops straight in the toilet for me. I also hate hate hate the hyphenated word thing that Wordpress does for the same reason >_<)

One trick that I've used in the past is to left-align text that will be lying beside a left-aligned image, and right-align text that will be lying beside a right-aligned image, so that the edge of the text nearest the image will look tidy. However, I have no idea if that was annoying to my readers or not; it just looked cool and it was 2005 so... LOL

Take my advice with several grains of salt, though, because generally speaking, I don't consciously take note of typography, alignment of texts, or even font type or color much on a website. I definitely notice when the selections of such make the content hard to read, as mentioned above, but if it's done at least adequately, it kind of melts into the background for me, and the content becomes the main focus. (what can I say, I'm a person of words first and design last LOLOLOLOL)
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Aku
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Re: Text-Align Preferences

Post by Aku »

Robin wrote:Take my advice with several grains of salt, though, because generally speaking, I don't consciously take note of typography, alignment of texts, or even font type or color much on a website. I definitely notice when the selections of such make the content hard to read, as mentioned above, but if it's done at least adequately, it kind of melts into the background for me, and the content becomes the main focus. (what can I say, I'm a person of words first and design last LOLOLOLOL)
They do say that "good design is invisible"! ;) I think it's just like you say: if it were bad, you might notice that it's hard to read or ugly, but if it's good the content shines because the design is doing its job correctly! :heart:
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Re: Text-Align Preferences

Post by Anise »

I actually prefer justify and use it for my shrines most of the time because I hate the way left/right align looks because I feel it takes away otherwise clean lines in a websites. The uneven lines kill me. That being said I only really notice it when I'm focusing on a design. When I actually read shrines it doesn't matter as long as the font is a reasonable size since I can read the text either way.

I will say I'm rethinking it a lot because I didn't realize how much it bothered some people.
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