Ragged right

[geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA]

 Holly Turner quoted _Type & Layout_ by Colin Wheildon,
 which claimed that readers comprehend fully justified text
 better than text set in ragged left or right.

 This is a personal peeve of mine: all studies of typography
 are so contextual that they rapidly become meaningless
 outside that context. It's trivial to create poorly
 justified type, with large rivers and bizarre hyphenation,
 that is harder to read than well-set ragged right type; you
 can also reverse the situation. Either format can be
 illegible if you choose your column width, leading or font
 inappropriately.

 Wheildon's studies are valid and robust from what I've read
 of them, but they apply to a very narrow audience and in a
 very narrow context. In typography, there's only one rule
 that's worth the ink (or electrons) it's printed on: create
 a design that _you_ can read easily, then test it on your
 audience to make sure _they_ have the same reading
 preferences you do.

 --Geoff Hart     @8^{)}     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
 Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.

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