Creative Tips #6: How Can You Justify It?

One way to make a document look neater and more professional is to "justify" the text -- make it line up at the right edge. If you know what you are doing and when to use it, justified text can make a big difference to your presentation.

You should never use justified text in an informal setting. Don't send Mom or that "special someone" a letter that looks like an official communique from the UN! Justified text definitely says "Business, formal" and you should only use it in that context.

The Ups and Downs of Justifying Text

If there is one thing your mother should have warned you about, it's this: having a crisp, straight right margin is terrific, but if you do it indiscriminately you can get in trouble. (There were other things she warned you not to be indiscriminate about, but we won't go into those here.) To understand why, we have to take a look at how type is set professionally, and the difference between that and what your word processor does.

In the space of a very few years, typesetting has gone from solid metal type handled only by artisans in a special workshop to something that can be done, within limits, on any modern desktop computer. Justified text once involved inserting tiny spacers between words in a line of metal type in order to make the end of the last word line up with the margin. Now your computer inserts the extra space.

The technology may have changed, but the basic goal is the same: to space the text so evenly that the reader doesn't notice that the spacing changes from one line to the next. Well-justified text just looks neat, and the varied spacing doesn't attract attention. In poorly-justified text, the unequal spacing makes itself obvious, a distraction that also makes things harder to read.

In the (expensive) professional layout programs that designers use, there is tremendous control over spacing: space between the words and between the letters, even tiny modifications to the scale of the letters themselves are possible. In a word processor you really don't have much control at all, because the ONLY thing a word processor does is vary the word spacing, but you can still avoid the pitfalls by sticking to one basic rule.

Keep It Wide

Your line, that is: problems with justified text show up when there aren't enough words, and therefore word spaces, for the computer to be able to even them out discreetly. Here is what the same paragraph looks like when it is set in a longer line width:

There are actually three factors at work here: the length of the line of text, the size of the text, and to a lesser degree the typeface. It is the ratio of point size to line length that makes the main difference. Small text (like 8 point)? You can get away (barely) with a 2 inch line, but 2.5 inches would be better. 12 point text will not look good justified at a line length of less than 4 inches (trust me).

Opening up the leading (line spacing), as we covered in Creative Tips #3, can help make the variable word spacing less noticeable and will also give your page a more open, airy look that invites the reader. This is particularly effective when you are creating a professional resume, or employee training materials. In both cases, you want the document to be as easy to read as possible!

Dense, closely-packed text is even more intimidating when it is justified than when it has a ragged right edge. Why do you suppose so many credit card contracts and notices are printed that way? A cynical person might suppose that the company doesn't want people to actually read them. Ahem.

Bonus Tip

One of the things that can seriously affect the readability of your essay, letter, or employee manual is the size of the paragraphs. Long paragraphs that go on for twenty lines or more were fashionable and quite expected a hundred years ago when people were both more formal and more literate. Today we are much less formal, and, sadly, much less literate than our great-grandparents, and it is only in scholarly tomes that the long paragraph still enjoys a useful life.

Keep your paragraphs short; three to five sentences is usually plenty. If you find yourself rambling on, take a moment to see if you have really thought through what you want to say, and properly organized your thoughts. Then go back and revise the text, removing anything that doesn't need to be there and breaking up overlong paragraphs into smaller ones. So, it uses more paper. Don't be stingy!

Happy typesetting,

Alan Gilbertson
Creative Director
G&G Creative

The Creative Tips newsletter is published by G&G Creative, Tujunga, CA. More at www.gngcreative.com or on the blog.

G&G Creative specializes in graphic design, photography and copy writing for print and the web.

Copyright © 2009 Alan Gilbertson. All Rights Reserved.