Using ragged right in technical publications

[Karen Schriver <ks0e+ -at- ANDREW -dot- CMU -dot- EDU>]

Hi folks,

Holly Turner asked:

Does anyone know why ragged right justification is used in almost all
technical publications?  A book I am reading, _Type & Layout_ by Colin
Wheildon,  references a study that indicates that readers comprehend
fully justified text better than text set in ragged left or right.  I
can provide the actual percentages if anyone is interested.

Does anyone know of other studies that prove this study wrong?

Thanks,

Holly Turner
Technical Writer
Harbinger Corp.

====
Holly,

I review the study of typography that Wheildon sites and dozens of
others in my book Dynamics in Document Design (Wiley, 1997). I hope my
discussion will help you make sense of his claim that fully justified
text is better than  ragged right. As the research clearly shows (and i
think Mr. Wheildon misses this point), the issue is NOT justification
versus non-justification, that is, it is not ragged right vs. justified;
rather, it is rivers or no rivers, bizarre word-spacing or not, and
excessive hyphenation or not. Research shows that rivers, odd
word-spacing, and excessive hyphenation slow readers down.
Coincidentally, each of these factors is a typical artifact of fully
justified text. However, note I said typical for it does not mean
always. There are software programs that allow document designers to
edit the wordspacing and hyphenation zones. When using programs that
allow one to control for equal spaces between the words and for only one
hyphen in a row, then one can achieve the same reading speed with
justified text as with unjustified. It is important, in fact crucial,
that documents designers think about the effects of their decisions on
the reader and not to come up with arbitrary standards based on
superficial readings of the research literature.

good luck,

karen schriver
KSA, Document Design and Research

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