[Athen] Left-aligned vs justified text

[Chagnon | PubCom]

Priceless comments from the professor!

 

Yes, ragged right/left aligned text looks more messy, and fully justified
text has those smooth tidy left and right margins. For some people, that's
important but it's more of a subjective preference rather than one style is
better than the other. I've always thought of it as the person's cognitive
preference and I wasn't surprised to learn that the professor is a
scientist.

 

You could also say that ragged right looks more informal, more inviting, and
less stuffy than justified. Still, these are subjective opinions and
preferences.

 

Yes, academic textbooks and journals have justified text, but that too has
changed over the past 25 years. It's definitely not accurate to state that
"justified text is always used in books." NO! That just isn't true at all.
I'd estimate that about 40% of today's textbooks are not justified and
wouldn't be surprised if the numbers were 50/50.

 

And lastly, the comment about accessibility is, well, outdated. We must
build our content for the type of technology used to communicate with our
audience. What was acceptable decades ago when the professor was in college
doesn't necessarily work in today's learning environments. 

 

--Bevi Chagnon

 

 

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