 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group On Justification Major Keary |
 |
From time to time there appear references to various kinds of justification in the context of typography. The verb, to justify, has several meanings, one of which is: "To make exact; to fit or arrange exactly; to adjust to exact shape, size, or position" [Oxford English Dictionary]. Its use goes back to the sixteenth century and was adopted by the printing industry. In fact there are two print-related usages; one in type-founding, and the other in printing.
Back in the days when manuscripts were hand-written, and paper was expensive, scribes developed a technique of using up as much of the paper area by filling lines to an even right-hand margin. A squeeze here, a squeeze there, and the judicious abbreviation enabled them to achieve even alignment of both left and right margins: justification. Studies have shown that justified text is easier to read than ragged-right, which may be the result of centuries of conditioning - or an indication that the old scribes knew more than we realise.
When Caxton and Gutenberg came on the scene they emulated the manuscript scribes and devised their own respective techniques that justified text. In fact the person we know as Johannes Gutenberg was Johannes Gensfliech zur Laden Gutenberg (c.1400-68); he took his mother's maiden name in accordance with a custom of the day that one son should carry on the mother's name. [Encyclopedia of Graphic Communications]
When we talk about justification, it means a block of text that forms even left and right margins. Terms such as right justified and left justified should be avoided; they are nonsense terms that should be replaced by right aligned and left aligned (or ragged-right).
Right-aligned text has its uses, but should not be applied to body text in general. For example, it is ideal to illustrate the weird things that can result from automated hyphenation systems. Generally it makes for poor readability.
Left-aligned, or ragged-right, text is often used to avoid hyphenation, which usually results in excessive differences in line length.
I am not sure what 'full justification' means, and don't recollect having come across the term. Justification means the adjustment of spacing between words in order to fill out a line to the right margin. Kerning means the adjustment of spacing between certain pairs of letters for better visual appearance. A ligature is the physical joining of two letters, also for better visual appearance. Letterspacing is the adjustment of inter-letter spacing and is used - in very small increments - in automated tracking systems; letterspacing is better known in the printing industry for its use in heavy-type headlines.
Justification goes hand-in-hand with word division, or hyphenation. Without dividing, or breaking, words at the end of some lines the body text can look awful, with instances of a few words on a line with very large amounts of white space in between them. It is a common occurrence in newspapers.
The only trusted automated hyphenation system I have encountered is the EDCO dictionary that came with the GEM version of Ventura Publisher and required in the order of 1 MB of memory. It complied well with Hart's Rules and hard-copy hyphenation dictionaries, and was in editable text-based format.
Word processing and DTP applications that run under Windows use a mix of dictionary and algorithm and are unreliable, some more than others. PageMaker enables the user to change entries in the dictionary, or add new entries for unlisted words. There are differences of a practical nature in the way that the same words in American and UK English are respectively divided. 'Progress' is divided pro-gress in UK and Australian English, but prog-ress in American English. The reason is the way in which the word is pronounced: in American English the emphasis is on the first syllable, prog, which rhymes with 'frog'; in UK/Oz English the first syllable is pro, which rhymes with 'hoe', and has equal emphasis with the second part, gress.
Human proof reading is the only sure way of avoiding hyphenation bloopers, such as rear-ranging, which is what one top DTP application did to rearranging; and sub-tle (for subtle), which appears in a recently published book.
The studies mentioned in paragraph 2 were conducted by Colin Wheildon at the University of New South Wales. It was also confirmed that body text is easier to read when set in a serif typeface rather than a sans-serif typeface.
He describes the studies in Type & Layout (ISBN 0-9624891-5-8), which appears not to be available in Australia.
Reprinted from the July 2002 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
   |