Re: Using ragged right in technical publications

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

Kathryn Marshall asked,

From:    Kathryn Marshall <kmarshall -at- MODACAD -dot- COM>
Subject: Re: Using ragged right in technical publications

That's funny because I've heard the exact opposite - that ragged right
edged text is easier to read. Of course, I just "heard" this. But I
personally agree with it. A company I used to work for used justified
text because they thought it looked neater, but it caused some words to
be stretched or bunched together, which IMHO, made it very difficult to
read (especially because they also used special fonts for keywords, user
input, etc.).

$0.02,
Kathryn

=======

Yes, Kathryn you did hear just the opposite. Maybe in my class Planning
and Testing Documents--way back when you were at Carnegie Mellon
University??? You are right that the research literature has supported
ragged right. But recent literature also helps us understand WHY ragged
right was better and helps us recognize situations in which fully
justified text can be just as good. Those situations include those in
which document designers have full control and knowledge of how to set
the relations between kerning, wordspacing, and hyphenation (all of
which interact in substantial ways in typical software programs).
Typically choosing to justify one's text means "give me rivers and while
you're at it, give me excessive hyphenation." But there are ways to
control this mess. But they can be painful and time consuming.

The bottom line is that unless you want to fuss with these items (and
setting them properly often requires an advanced degree in mathematics)
one should use ragged right. It affords equal wordspacing and kerning
which are the main threats to fluid continuous reading. It's a piece of
cake to set the hyphenation to no more than one hyphen in a row. With
all these in place, readers will have no problems.

Glad to see you online my dear!

karen schriver
KSA, Document Design and Research

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