The right hand edge

A column of type can be set in two main ways: ranged left, sometimes called ragged right; or justified, which means a straight edge, achieved by distributing the extra space at the end of the line among all the available word spaces.

So justified type looks neat, at the expense of uneven word-spacing. It is still the dominant design for printed books and newspapers, and it gives an air of formality.

Does it matter?

Perhaps surprisingly, the research literature concludes that whether or not a column is justified has no effect of reading speed, with one exception. Poorer readers are affected when reading narrow columns (average 7 words per line). However, when the column width is increased to 12 words per line those same readers are fine.¹‍

Two excellent reviews are by Paul Stiff² and Mary Dyson,³ both staff at the University of Reading Department of Typography & Graphic Communication.*

Paul’s paper is a wide-ranging account of the history and cultural significance of justified type.  He remarks:

No matter what opinions publishers and readers express about unjustified setting, there is no evidence to show that it either lessens or improves reading ‘efficiency’. Efficiency has been measured by readers’ eye movements, by their speed of reading, and by their comprehension and recall of text content (page 132).

Mary comes to similar conclusions, and also addresses the issue of ‘rivers’ – vertical lines that appear if widened word spaces align:

Vertical rivers, where interword spaces line up with each other on successive lines, may not be a problem except aesthetically. Studies of eye movements suggest that we don’t use the text of the next line to preview what is coming next.⁴

For typographers and publishers, there are strong genre associations with justified type. Ranged left type is an article of faith for graphic designers, until they are asked to design a newspaper, novel, or reference book. Some newspapers have used this as a genre marker – justified type for news, and ranged left for magazine supplements.

I’m with the ranged left tribe. But we can’t claim that research backs us up. Any difference in performance is relatively trivial. Incidentally, this also goes for some other typography controversies including serifed vs sans serif type.

It should be said that the research is not particularly systematic – it doesn’t consider the full range of possibilities, and nor does it get updated when technology changes. A sophisticated typography application such as Adobe InDesign is able to reduce space between words as well as increase it, giving its justified type a more even appearance. And it has good hyphenation logic. Web applications seem just add extra space – here’s a sample from Webflow, used to create this website:

Whereas this setting by Adobe InDesign is a lot more even – although the word spaces do seem particularly squeezed in the second line down:

*I quote the name in full, because they come from a specialist university department where they think deeply about these things

1. Gregory, M., & Poulton, E. C. (1970). Even versus uneven right-hand margins and the rate of comprehension in reading. Ergonomics, 13(4), 427-434.

2. Stiff, P. (1995). The end of the line: A survey of unjustified typography. Information Design Journal, 8(2), 125-152.

3. Dyson, M. C. (2023). Legibility: How and why typography affects ease of reading. https://legible-typography.com/en/

4. Pollatsek, A., Raney, G. E., Lagasse, L., & Rayner, K. (1993). The use of information below fixation in reading and in visual-search. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology–Revue Canadienne de Psychologie Experimentale, 47(2), 179-200.

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