12th November, 2007
More Blathering About Typography
Monday, 5:14 pm in Geeking
And just so that we don’t have two days worth of fluff posts…
As part of my new found interest in typography I decided to conduct a quick survey of the use of rag-right versus justified alignment in print today. After wandering around the various newsagents and bookstores in the mall, I’ve come to the following conclusions:
- All newspapers used justified text, rivers be damned.
- Magazines were mixed. All magazines on art and design – web, fashion, architecture – used rag right but for every other genre it was pretty random (Time and Cosmo were justified; New Scientist and Australian Muscle Car weren’t). Interestingly, the less ‘glossy’ a publication was, the more likely it was to use justified text, however the reverse was not true (high production-value magazines could be either).
- Unsurprisingly, all paperbacks (novels and non-fiction, non-picture books) used justified text.
- Books with pictures (coffee table books, art books, travel books, etc.) were mixed. Most used justified body text with rag-right captioning.
- The exception to this (again) were books on design (and, to a lesser extent, art). These almost exclusively used rag right.
I’m starting to get the impression that personal preference for rag right versus justified text might indeed have a relationship with how much institutionalised design training a reader has had. Assuming all publications are typeset by designers (just… assume with me for a moment), this quite possibly would explain why text targeted at designers was almost exclusively rag right; because the target audience is more sensitive to text spacing than the ‘average’ reader. Newer publications also seemed slightly more likely to be rag right (and sans serif), which seems to indicate that it’s at least in part a fashion trend.
Shockingly, I actually managed to find one book on (print) typography too, so I diligently went and read the sections on the justification of text. Nothing much new there; avoid on short lines, use with caution on longer lines, and I even managed to dig up a formulae for how this is traditionally worked out:
Twice the font height in points is the minimum line length in picas for justified text.
So, if you’ve got 12pt font you need a line that is at least 24 picas long before you can start thinking about justifying your words.1 Of course, most people don’t actually know what a pica is (12 points), but here’s a calculator to give a rough pixel approximation (printer’s or computer picas; the differences aren’t huge). However, that being said, remember that this is the rule for print and doesn’t take into account things like, yanno, people being able to resize your text.
Interestingly, the author took a brief segue to talk about his reasoning for using justified text in his book, even though the variable word spacing annoyed him. The decision was an aesthetic one; he thought it looked better to have the square text blocks along-side the much more ‘bitsy’ example text. The other author (the book was, like, two books published together) said a similar thing; justified text gives a strong block look and the reasons for choosing it over rag-right are primarily aesthetic. Rag-right, on the other hand, gives a strong left-hand line and a ‘fuzzy’ right edge.
Unfortunately, typography for the screen/web specifically is apparently a bit too esoteric for the Thunderdome Dymocks, so maybe next weekend a trip out to Borders or the ANU Co-Op might be in order. Hrm…
Also (and this hasn’t occurred to me in the last, like, six years); people out there don’t use ClearType font rendering in Windows XP? Huh. It’s turned off by default, eh? Not so in Vista and not so with OS X; aah, the merry march of progress!
- If you’re wondering; v-s.net uses percentage-based font sizes so I’m not actually sure off the top of my head what the exact resulting points end up as. I think the post body is about 9pt and the comments are about 7pt, which if you’re going by the book’s formula leaves the minimum line lengths as about 290px and 225px respectively. To save you all having to get out your rulers, after guttering and ‘meta’ columns are taken into account, the text box width here is a little over 400px. ^
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The text-align wars...
Ever since I had to use Word to give in “official” documents (i.e. school essays) I always used justified text. This wasn’t actually due my inherent artistic sensibilities. My dad can be really scary when he wants to, and in this instance he decided that unless my essay was justified, I could have revolutionized the whole concept of Quantum Physics, yet my essay was still worth nothing.
Starting from that, I used to justify most of my written text on the web as well… until I read Rose’s article on it… and until I had a really “thin” sidebar.
All in all, I’m fine with justified text, provided I can read it comfortably: no large gaps between words.
As far as readability goes, when I read articles “for fun”, I’m fine with 9pt/11-12px text size. But I also read a lot of e-books online, in HTML format (black text on white). I almost ALWAY resize the text to around 20px. I can read it much easier that way.
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Ever since I had to use Word to give in “official” documents (i.e. school essays) I always used justified text.
Same. Actually, all through university I wrote all my essays in justified, double-spaced High Tower Text (it’s a serif font; comes with some versions of Office). I’d almost invariably get, “Great essay! Nice font!” written on it by the tutor.
I read a lot of novels, so I think my predilection for formatting comes from those. I was overjoyed when I learnt the CSS pseudo-class that allows you to do first-line indenting.
But I also read a lot of e-books online, in HTML format (black text on white). I almost ALWAY resize the text to around 20px.
Yeah, my eyes mean I can’t read off the screen for extended periods. ‘Course, I do (because alas fanfic doesn’t come in book format), but I regret it later. Black text on while kills me, as does white on black. I’m best with dark-on-off-white; I was actually interested to note that my professional creative writing suite (Scrivener) has a ‘fullscreen’ edit mode which uses a slightly pinkish rather than pure white background… which is also incidentally resized to about 8 words wide. It’s very nice to write on, even for long periods.
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Oh ho: fanfiction was the first to kill my eyes (glasses with -3.0; I’m short sighted).
I remember when I was a die-hard DC++ user a few years back, I changed the text to white and the background to black, for easier reading. But in a few months I had terrible migraines, so reverted back.
But now that you mention it, I did notice that having non-white background (though still light colored), is easier to read. I never did that consciously. But my favorite fanfic websites are restrictedsection[dot]org and fiction[dot]gurabiteshiyon[dot]net. The first one uses a light cream colored background and the latter a pink/lilac one.
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glasses with -3.0; I’m short sighted
I’m up -4-point-something and still deteriorating.
My astigmatism prescription is so pronounced that no optometrists actually keep lenses in stock that are high enough; I always have to wait 2-3 weeks for new glasses because they need to send away to grind everything from scratch. Naturally this sucked when I was in that car crash and needed emergency new glasses. 
But now that you mention it, I did notice that having non-white background (though still light colored), is easier to read.
It’s ‘cause stark white is too glary coming off monitors. It’d be the same if you painted all the rooms in your house pure white; bright, stark and cold.
Also: noiresensus.com! Greatest. Fic archive. Ever! And not just ‘cause it’s run by some IRL friends.
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You’re lucky, anything other than 12pt Arial got my essays and coursework a mark of ‘U’. Tight-ass lecturers.
It’s funny you mention ClearType though, I have only recently started using it. I hate what it does to Verdana, and because I usually use that for my site I kept it off. I only turned it on by accident and discovered it renders Courier New in Notepad++ much more friendly on the ol’ eyes, and now its grown on me.
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~Mat [h] once had 5 marks deducted from a 15 mark assignment because he didn’t include a staple. As you can imagine he was dreadfully impressed with that lecturer.
Though, working for government; every year every department puts out a little book which details how documents should be formatted for presentation to the Minister. And these are the Minister’s personal preferences, mind you, so if the Minister wants all minutes to be written in 16pt italic Impact then all minutes will be written in 16pt italic Impact.
Some senior public servants also have specific formats that they insist on; mum used to work just above a woman who insisted all her staff write everything in 8pt Verdana. This of course drove mum absolutely nuts, because these documents would get passed up and mum (having Old Person Eyesight) just couldn’t read them. Much hilarity was had.It’s funny you mention ClearType though, I have only recently started using it.
I honestly hadn’t even considered people didn’t use ClearType until IP bought it up. TBH I think I’ve been using it so long (ever since I got XP, really) that I must’ve thought it came on by default or something. On OS X I’m not even sure you can turn it off.
I hate what it does to Verdana, and because I usually use that for my site I kept it off.
Haha! This was exactly the reason I used to dislike it, too (and I think the way it prettified monospaced fonts was also the reason I grew to like it). I used to be a
<font face="Verdana" size="1">junkie, and when I first turned on ClearType I mourned for the loss of my Verdana’s sharp, square edges. Of course, Verdana is pretty much the only font that looks decent without anti-aliasing (bitmap fonts non-withstanding), so I promptly discovered Trebuchet MS and proceeded to abuse that for a while, then Lucida Sans Unicode.Ah, fun times…