Aligning Text

Extract form Parker, R. & Berry, P. (1998) Looking Good in Print, (4th edn) Coriolis, Arizona.

Flush left: Readability studies tend to favour flush - left /ragged - right alignment. This means that the first letter of each line is lined up with each other, but he lines themselves are of irregular length.

The irregular line endings create a ragged margin of white space giving your publication a lighter look. In addition, the even word spacing enables readers to easily recognise word groups. Flush left text has an informal, contemporary feeling to it.

Justified text produces lines of equal length. The type aligns to both left and right margins. Word spacing is adjusted automatically to create the even line endings. The uniform line length reduces the amount of white space at the end of each line, tending to "darken" the publication. Justified text has also been found to be more difficult to read as many more words are hyphenated and large gaps often appear between words, due to the need to create lines of equal length.

Many publications tend to use justification ( magazines, newspapers) because the word density is higher. Less space is needed to communicate the same amount o information which can reduce the number of ages in a document and thus reduce cost.

Centred alignment is often used for display type, particularly for short headlines that span more than one text column. Centering text can lend a formal tone to a document. Its frequently used for invitations and official announcements.

However, using long blocks of centred text is very difficult to read as readers have to search for the beginning of each line. So if headings are more than two lines long, avoid the centre option. Also if you have a quotation that's more than three lines, don't centre the text, left justify the text, then indent on the page.

Flush right aligment also forces the reader to slow down to find the beginning of the next line. Its recommended that you limit its use to concise heading and headlines.