Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Helge Hafting]

John Kane wrote:

It depends :)  I think that there was some research in
the 1980s suggesting that ragged is easier to read.  


I think, though, that it may depend on the width of
the paper.  I was having the devil of a time reading a
research proposal my boss had handed me. It is
justified and takes up almost the entire page. 
Margins  are only about 1.4 cm left and right.  


Out of frustration, I finally did a cut  paste from
Word to Lyx and set it in a two column format (APA)
which is easy to read albeit justified.   
  

Justification alone does not guarantee readability.
Overly long lines is indeed one way of ruining things.
The rule of thumb is no more than 66 letters per line,
which is why LyX seems to be a bit wasteful on normal paper.
If you want to save paper, use columns or smaller paper.
But note that very small margins might look ugly even
if readability doesn't suffer.

I think the wider the text the more useful ragged is
since it serves as a cue to where the eyes are to move
left after reaching the end of the line of text.
  

Actually, you don't need ragged _right_ for this.
The eyes don't have to find anything on the right
side - you just follow the text.  Your eyes need
to find the correct place on the left side though,
so ragged left could help a lot.  Much more than
ragged right.  But it is terminally ugly - the reason
why no document ever is printed right justified.
Centered is even better - but yuck.

Ragged right is also ugly - but people are more
used to it.  Many word processors (msword included)
makes a too bad job of justification - that's why they
don't default to justified.  Latex does this well
if the lines aren't too short.

I'd say - use justified unless you have a very clear
reason for not doing so.  Ragged right has its place,
but I don't think matters of taste alone is enough
to warrant it.  Extremely narrow columns might
be a reason, but even newspapers tend to justify...

Helge Hafting

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Bruce Pourciau]

On typographical matters, I generally seek advice from two sources:

Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographical Style
James Felici, The Complete Manual of Typography

Bringhurst, who generally prefers justified lines in setting books,  
has this to say about the occasions when ragged right might be  
preferable:


In justified text, there is always a trade-off between evenness of  
word spacing and frequency of hyphenation.  The best available  
compromise will depend on the nature of the text as well as on the  
specifics of the design.  Good compositors like to avoid consecutive  
hyphenated line-ends, but frequent hyphens are better than sloppy  
spacing, and ragged setting is better yet.
	Narrow measures - which prevent good justification - are commonly  
used when the text is set in multiple columns.  Setting ragged right  
under these conditions will lighten the page and decrease its  
stiffness, as well as preventing an outbreak of hyphenation.
	Many unserifed faces look best when set ragged no matter what the  
length of the measure.  And monospaced fonts, which are common on  
typewriters, always look better set ragged, in standard typewriter  
style.  A typewriter (or a computer-driven printer of similar  
quality) that justifies its lines in imitation of typesetting is a  
presumptuous machine, mimicking the outer form instead of the inner  
truth of typography.
	When setting ragged right from a computer, take a moment to refine  
your software's understanding of what constitutes an honest rag.   
Many programs are predisposed to invoke a minimum as well as a  
maximum line.  If permitted to do so, they will hyphenate words and  
adjust spaces regardless of whether they are ragging or justifying  
the text.  Ragged setting under these conditions produces an orderly  
ripple down the righthand side, making the text look like a neatly  
pinched piecrust. This approach combines the worst features of  
justification with the worst features of ragged setting, while  
eliminating the principal virtues of both.  Unless the measure is  
excruciatingly narrow, it is usually better to set a hard rag.  This  
means a fixed word space, no minimum line, and no hyphenation beyond  
what is inherent in the text. In a hard rag, hyphenated linebreaks  
may occur in words like self-consciousness, which are hyphenated  
anyway, but they can only occur with manual intervention in words  
like hyphenation or pseudosophisticated, which are not.


Bruce

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Helge Hafting]

John Kane wrote:

It depends :)  I think that there was some research in
the 1980s suggesting that ragged is easier to read.  


I think, though, that it may depend on the width of
the paper.  I was having the devil of a time reading a
research proposal my boss had handed me. It is
justified and takes up almost the entire page. 
Margins  are only about 1.4 cm left and right.  


Out of frustration, I finally did a cut  paste from
Word to Lyx and set it in a two column format (APA)
which is easy to read albeit justified.   
  

Justification alone does not guarantee readability.
Overly long lines is indeed one way of ruining things.
The rule of thumb is no more than 66 letters per line,
which is why LyX seems to be a bit wasteful on normal paper.
If you want to save paper, use columns or smaller paper.
But note that very small margins might look ugly even
if readability doesn't suffer.

I think the wider the text the more useful ragged is
since it serves as a cue to where the eyes are to move
left after reaching the end of the line of text.
  

Actually, you don't need ragged _right_ for this.
The eyes don't have to find anything on the right
side - you just follow the text.  Your eyes need
to find the correct place on the left side though,
so ragged left could help a lot.  Much more than
ragged right.  But it is terminally ugly - the reason
why no document ever is printed right justified.
Centered is even better - but yuck.

Ragged right is also ugly - but people are more
used to it.  Many word processors (msword included)
makes a too bad job of justification - that's why they
don't default to justified.  Latex does this well
if the lines aren't too short.

I'd say - use justified unless you have a very clear
reason for not doing so.  Ragged right has its place,
but I don't think matters of taste alone is enough
to warrant it.  Extremely narrow columns might
be a reason, but even newspapers tend to justify...

Helge Hafting

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Bruce Pourciau]

On typographical matters, I generally seek advice from two sources:

Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographical Style
James Felici, The Complete Manual of Typography

Bringhurst, who generally prefers justified lines in setting books,  
has this to say about the occasions when ragged right might be  
preferable:


In justified text, there is always a trade-off between evenness of  
word spacing and frequency of hyphenation.  The best available  
compromise will depend on the nature of the text as well as on the  
specifics of the design.  Good compositors like to avoid consecutive  
hyphenated line-ends, but frequent hyphens are better than sloppy  
spacing, and ragged setting is better yet.
	Narrow measures - which prevent good justification - are commonly  
used when the text is set in multiple columns.  Setting ragged right  
under these conditions will lighten the page and decrease its  
stiffness, as well as preventing an outbreak of hyphenation.
	Many unserifed faces look best when set ragged no matter what the  
length of the measure.  And monospaced fonts, which are common on  
typewriters, always look better set ragged, in standard typewriter  
style.  A typewriter (or a computer-driven printer of similar  
quality) that justifies its lines in imitation of typesetting is a  
presumptuous machine, mimicking the outer form instead of the inner  
truth of typography.
	When setting ragged right from a computer, take a moment to refine  
your software's understanding of what constitutes an honest rag.   
Many programs are predisposed to invoke a minimum as well as a  
maximum line.  If permitted to do so, they will hyphenate words and  
adjust spaces regardless of whether they are ragging or justifying  
the text.  Ragged setting under these conditions produces an orderly  
ripple down the righthand side, making the text look like a neatly  
pinched piecrust. This approach combines the worst features of  
justification with the worst features of ragged setting, while  
eliminating the principal virtues of both.  Unless the measure is  
excruciatingly narrow, it is usually better to set a hard rag.  This  
means a fixed word space, no minimum line, and no hyphenation beyond  
what is inherent in the text. In a hard rag, hyphenated linebreaks  
may occur in words like self-consciousness, which are hyphenated  
anyway, but they can only occur with manual intervention in words  
like hyphenation or pseudosophisticated, which are not.


Bruce

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Helge Hafting]

John Kane wrote:

It depends :)  I think that there was some research in
the 1980s suggesting that ragged is easier to read.  


I think, though, that it may depend on the width of
the paper.  I was having the devil of a time reading a
research proposal my boss had handed me. It is
justified and takes up almost the entire page. 
Margins  are only about 1.4 cm left and right.  


Out of frustration, I finally did a cut & paste from
Word to Lyx and set it in a two column format (APA)
which is easy to read albeit justified.   
  

Justification alone does not guarantee readability.
Overly long lines is indeed one way of ruining things.
The rule of thumb is no more than 66 letters per line,
which is why LyX seems to be a bit wasteful on normal paper.
If you want to save paper, use columns or smaller paper.
But note that very small margins might look ugly even
if readability doesn't suffer.

I think the wider the text the more useful ragged is
since it serves as a cue to where the eyes are to move
left after reaching the end of the line of text.
  

Actually, you don't need ragged _right_ for this.
The eyes don't have to find anything on the right
side - you just follow the text.  Your eyes need
to find the correct place on the left side though,
so ragged left could help a lot.  Much more than
ragged right.  But it is terminally ugly - the reason
why no document ever is printed right justified.
Centered is even better - but yuck.

Ragged right is also ugly - but people are more
used to it.  Many word processors (msword included)
makes a too bad job of justification - that's why they
don't default to justified.  Latex does this well
if the lines aren't too short.

I'd say - use justified unless you have a very clear
reason for not doing so.  Ragged right has its place,
but I don't think matters of taste alone is enough
to warrant it.  Extremely narrow columns might
be a reason, but even newspapers tend to justify...

Helge Hafting

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Bruce Pourciau]

On typographical matters, I generally seek advice from two sources:

Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographical Style
James Felici, The Complete Manual of Typography

Bringhurst, who generally prefers justified lines in setting books,  
has this to say about the occasions when ragged right might be  
preferable:


"In justified text, there is always a trade-off between evenness of  
word spacing and frequency of hyphenation.  The best available  
compromise will depend on the nature of the text as well as on the  
specifics of the design.  Good compositors like to avoid consecutive  
hyphenated line-ends, but frequent hyphens are better than sloppy  
spacing, and ragged setting is better yet.
	Narrow measures - which prevent good justification - are commonly  
used when the text is set in multiple columns.  Setting ragged right  
under these conditions will lighten the page and decrease its  
stiffness, as well as preventing an outbreak of hyphenation.
	Many unserifed faces look best when set ragged no matter what the  
length of the measure.  And monospaced fonts, which are common on  
typewriters, always look better set ragged, in standard typewriter  
style.  A typewriter (or a computer-driven printer of similar  
quality) that justifies its lines in imitation of typesetting is a  
presumptuous machine, mimicking the outer form instead of the inner  
truth of typography.
	When setting ragged right from a computer, take a moment to refine  
your software's understanding of what constitutes an honest rag.   
Many programs are predisposed to invoke a minimum as well as a  
maximum line.  If permitted to do so, they will hyphenate words and  
adjust spaces regardless of whether they are ragging or justifying  
the text.  Ragged setting under these conditions produces an orderly  
ripple down the righthand side, making the text look like a neatly  
pinched piecrust. This approach combines the worst features of  
justification with the worst features of ragged setting, while  
eliminating the principal virtues of both.  Unless the measure is  
excruciatingly narrow, it is usually better to set a hard rag.  This  
means a fixed word space, no minimum line, and no hyphenation beyond  
what is inherent in the text. In a hard rag, hyphenated linebreaks  
may occur in words like self-consciousness, which are hyphenated  
anyway, but they can only occur with manual intervention in words  
like hyphenation or pseudosophisticated, which are not."


Bruce

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2007, Eran Kaplinsky wrote:


Rich, You're talking about character protrusion, but the package does font
expansion and much more. Bottomline: text looks better. I can think of few
reasons not to use it.


Eran,

  The mechanism doesn't matter to me. The results do. And it does add that
subtle quality that subconsciously affects readers favorably.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.|  Accelerator(TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2007, Eran Kaplinsky wrote:


Rich, You're talking about character protrusion, but the package does font
expansion and much more. Bottomline: text looks better. I can think of few
reasons not to use it.


Eran,

  The mechanism doesn't matter to me. The results do. And it does add that
subtle quality that subconsciously affects readers favorably.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.|  Accelerator(TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2007, Eran Kaplinsky wrote:


Rich, You're talking about character protrusion, but the package does font
expansion and much more. Bottomline: text looks better. I can think of few
reasons not to use it.


Eran,

  The mechanism doesn't matter to me. The results do. And it does add that
subtle quality that subconsciously affects readers favorably.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.|  Accelerator(TM)
 Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2007, Steve Litt wrote:


Right now the body text is justified, which is the default in the Book
document class. Occasionally (maybe once every couple pages) something
doesn't fit right and sticks out into the right margin.


Steve,

  I have two approaches to solving the overfull horizontal line issue.
First, I put hyphenation hints in the word where it can be broken across two
lines. Second, I rewrite that sentence so it fits; sometimes reversing the
word order is all that's needed.


It occurred to me that I might just make it ragged right, but smarter
people than me argue both sides of that question.


  Almost all typeset material is fully justified. Ragged right does not look
as good and is not as easy to read.

  Having typeset my book with LyX, and using it for all articles, reports,
and other serious writing (other than proposals and short letters), I can
easily see the difference in other documents. For example, I just finished a
novel (name, author, and publisher ommited to protect the guilty) that was
obviously submitted as a Word document and photoset from that. Lines have
large interword spaces that are typical of word processed pages, but not
seen with typeset pages that adjust intercharacter spacing, too. I find it
distracting to read such text.

  My vote is full justification.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.|  Accelerator(TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Daniel Watkins]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Rich Shepard wrote:
   My vote is full justification.
Ditto. LaTeX defaults to that for a reason.
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFyhdq3arasOikFPYRAgWcAJ9A1PlPNUr/dzKdYvalpvblR9JNjACfe28J
+XrWGtUFMSGv/8xHqBv97kc=
=Mxro
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[John Kane]

--- Steve Litt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Hi all,
 
 I'm writing a short book called Troubleshooting:
 Just the Facts. The 
 intention is to make it an Ebook that can be printed
 and staple bound by the 
 customer, if so desired. I use skip rather than
 indentation to separate 
 paragraphs, and I think I'll probably keep it that
 way.
 
 Right now the body text is justified, which is the
 default in the Book 
 document class. Occasionally (maybe once every
 couple pages) something 
 doesn't fit right and sticks out into the right
 margin. 
 
 It occurred to me that I might just make it ragged
 right, but smarter people 
 than me argue both sides of that question.
 
 So what do you all think? Justified or ragged right?

It depends :)  I think that there was some research in
the 1980s suggesting that ragged is easier to read.  

I think, though, that it may depend on the width of
the paper.  I was having the devil of a time reading a
research proposal my boss had handed me. It is
justified and takes up almost the entire page. 
Margins  are only about 1.4 cm left and right.  

Out of frustration, I finally did a cut  paste from
Word to Lyx and set it in a two column format (APA)
which is easy to read albeit justified.   

I think the wider the text the more useful ragged is
since it serves as a cue to where the eyes are to move
left after reaching the end of the line of text.


__
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2007, Eran Kaplinsky wrote:

I strongly recommend the microtype package, which goes a long way toward 
reducing hyphens and improving fit.


  If that's the package I think it is, it actually places the terminal
character either a very small distance beyond or inside the actual right
margin. While under magnification we could see the jaggies, when actually
reading the page it appears straighter than otherwise.

  Just another optical delusion.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.|  Accelerator(TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Eran Kaplinsky]

I strongly recommend the microtype package, which goes a long way
toward reducing hyphens and improving fit.




  If that's the package I think it is, it actually places the terminal
character either a very small distance beyond or inside the actual right
margin. While under magnification we could see the jaggies, when actually
reading the page it appears straighter than otherwise.

  Just another optical delusion.

Rich
Rich, You're talking about character protrusion, but the package does 
font expansion and much more. Bottomline: text looks better. I can think 
of few reasons not to use it.



Eran

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2007, Steve Litt wrote:


Right now the body text is justified, which is the default in the Book
document class. Occasionally (maybe once every couple pages) something
doesn't fit right and sticks out into the right margin.


Steve,

  I have two approaches to solving the overfull horizontal line issue.
First, I put hyphenation hints in the word where it can be broken across two
lines. Second, I rewrite that sentence so it fits; sometimes reversing the
word order is all that's needed.


It occurred to me that I might just make it ragged right, but smarter
people than me argue both sides of that question.


  Almost all typeset material is fully justified. Ragged right does not look
as good and is not as easy to read.

  Having typeset my book with LyX, and using it for all articles, reports,
and other serious writing (other than proposals and short letters), I can
easily see the difference in other documents. For example, I just finished a
novel (name, author, and publisher ommited to protect the guilty) that was
obviously submitted as a Word document and photoset from that. Lines have
large interword spaces that are typical of word processed pages, but not
seen with typeset pages that adjust intercharacter spacing, too. I find it
distracting to read such text.

  My vote is full justification.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.|  Accelerator(TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Daniel Watkins]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Rich Shepard wrote:
   My vote is full justification.
Ditto. LaTeX defaults to that for a reason.
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFyhdq3arasOikFPYRAgWcAJ9A1PlPNUr/dzKdYvalpvblR9JNjACfe28J
+XrWGtUFMSGv/8xHqBv97kc=
=Mxro
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[John Kane]

--- Steve Litt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Hi all,
 
 I'm writing a short book called Troubleshooting:
 Just the Facts. The 
 intention is to make it an Ebook that can be printed
 and staple bound by the 
 customer, if so desired. I use skip rather than
 indentation to separate 
 paragraphs, and I think I'll probably keep it that
 way.
 
 Right now the body text is justified, which is the
 default in the Book 
 document class. Occasionally (maybe once every
 couple pages) something 
 doesn't fit right and sticks out into the right
 margin. 
 
 It occurred to me that I might just make it ragged
 right, but smarter people 
 than me argue both sides of that question.
 
 So what do you all think? Justified or ragged right?

It depends :)  I think that there was some research in
the 1980s suggesting that ragged is easier to read.  

I think, though, that it may depend on the width of
the paper.  I was having the devil of a time reading a
research proposal my boss had handed me. It is
justified and takes up almost the entire page. 
Margins  are only about 1.4 cm left and right.  

Out of frustration, I finally did a cut  paste from
Word to Lyx and set it in a two column format (APA)
which is easy to read albeit justified.   

I think the wider the text the more useful ragged is
since it serves as a cue to where the eyes are to move
left after reaching the end of the line of text.


__
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2007, Eran Kaplinsky wrote:

I strongly recommend the microtype package, which goes a long way toward 
reducing hyphens and improving fit.


  If that's the package I think it is, it actually places the terminal
character either a very small distance beyond or inside the actual right
margin. While under magnification we could see the jaggies, when actually
reading the page it appears straighter than otherwise.

  Just another optical delusion.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.|  Accelerator(TM)
http://www.appl-ecosys.com Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Eran Kaplinsky]

I strongly recommend the microtype package, which goes a long way
toward reducing hyphens and improving fit.




  If that's the package I think it is, it actually places the terminal
character either a very small distance beyond or inside the actual right
margin. While under magnification we could see the jaggies, when actually
reading the page it appears straighter than otherwise.

  Just another optical delusion.

Rich
Rich, You're talking about character protrusion, but the package does 
font expansion and much more. Bottomline: text looks better. I can think 
of few reasons not to use it.



Eran

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2007, Steve Litt wrote:


Right now the body text is justified, which is the default in the Book
document class. Occasionally (maybe once every couple pages) something
doesn't fit right and sticks out into the right margin.


Steve,

  I have two approaches to solving the overfull horizontal line issue.
First, I put hyphenation hints in the word where it can be broken across two
lines. Second, I rewrite that sentence so it fits; sometimes reversing the
word order is all that's needed.


It occurred to me that I might just make it ragged right, but smarter
people than me argue both sides of that question.


  Almost all typeset material is fully justified. Ragged right does not look
as good and is not as easy to read.

  Having typeset my book with LyX, and using it for all articles, reports,
and other serious writing (other than proposals and short letters), I can
easily see the difference in other documents. For example, I just finished a
novel (name, author, and publisher ommited to protect the guilty) that was
obviously submitted as a Word document and photoset from that. Lines have
large interword spaces that are typical of word processed pages, but not
seen with typeset pages that adjust intercharacter spacing, too. I find it
distracting to read such text.

  My vote is full justification.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.   |The Environmental Permitting
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.|  Accelerator(TM)
 Voice: 503-667-4517  Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Daniel Watkins]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Rich Shepard wrote:
>   My vote is full justification.
Ditto. LaTeX defaults to that for a reason.
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFyhdq3arasOikFPYRAgWcAJ9A1PlPNUr/dzKdYvalpvblR9JNjACfe28J
+XrWGtUFMSGv/8xHqBv97kc=
=Mxro
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[John Kane]

--- Steve Litt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I'm writing a short book called "Troubleshooting:
> Just the Facts". The 
> intention is to make it an Ebook that can be printed
> and staple bound by the 
> customer, if so desired. I use skip rather than
> indentation to separate 
> paragraphs, and I think I'll probably keep it that
> way.
> 
> Right now the body text is justified, which is the
> default in the Book 
> document class. Occasionally (maybe once every
> couple pages) something 
> doesn't fit right and sticks out into the right
> margin. 
> 
> It occurred to me that I might just make it ragged
> right, but smarter people 
> than me argue both sides of that question.
> 
> So what do you all think? Justified or ragged right?

It depends :)  I think that there was some research in
the 1980s suggesting that ragged is easier to read.  

I think, though, that it may depend on the width of
the paper.  I was having the devil of a time reading a
research proposal my boss had handed me. It is
justified and takes up almost the entire page. 
Margins  are only about 1.4 cm left and right.  

Out of frustration, I finally did a cut & paste from
Word to Lyx and set it in a two column format (APA)
which is easy to read albeit justified.   

I think the wider the text the more useful ragged is
since it serves as a cue to where the eyes are to move
left after reaching the end of the line of text.


__
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 

Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Rich Shepard]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2007, Eran Kaplinsky wrote:

I strongly recommend the microtype package, which goes a long way toward 
reducing hyphens and improving fit.


  If that's the package I think it is, it actually places the terminal
character either a very small distance beyond or inside the actual right
margin. While under magnification we could see the jaggies, when actually
reading the page it appears straighter than otherwise.

  Just another optical delusion.

Rich

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Re: Do you like justified or ragged right?

[Eran Kaplinsky]

I strongly recommend the microtype package, which goes a long way
toward reducing hyphens and improving fit.




  If that's the package I think it is, it actually places the terminal
character either a very small distance beyond or inside the actual right
margin. While under magnification we could see the jaggies, when actually
reading the page it appears straighter than otherwise.

  Just another optical delusion.

Rich
Rich, You're talking about character protrusion, but the package does 
font expansion and much more. Bottomline: text looks better. I can think 
of few reasons not to use it.



Eran