The Professional Look – Part XI
The Professional Look, The Complete Guide to Desktop Publishing, is a book I co-authored with Scott Tilden in 1991. Each Thursday I post an excerpt from the chapter I wrote about typography. Many of you dye-subbers also design some of the graphics you print, which includes setting type. Hopefully these posts will give you new insights into typography. Click here for my previous post.
Type alignment
Lines of type are categorized by their alignment to a margin. It’s either:
Flush, so the beginnings and/or the endings of lines align vertically with one another, or
Ragged, often called rag for short, where line beginnings and endings do not align.
This means we can set blocks of type in one of four ways:
Rag right, with type flush to the left margin but ragged at the right
Rag left, with type flush to the right margin but ragged at the left
Justified, with each line flush to both right and left margins, or
Centered, with the type balanced symmetrically, and the line endings ragged at both left and right.
Research shows that rag right is most legible in body copy. After reading one line of type, the eye jumps naturally back to the left margin to find the start of the next line.
Rag left type slows reading speed appreciably because the eye can’t automatically jump back to a fixed left margin. It has to hunt for the start of each succeeding line.
Centered text is used mostly in special applications, such as invitations or headlines, and usually in small amounts. Of the four, it is least easy to read.
When is it ragtime?
Justified type lends a more formal look to copy. Rag right adds a touch of informality. Most research shows that, for the average reader, justified and rag right type are equally legible.
However, slower readers find rag right text to be more legible. Why? Possibly because the spacing between words and letters in rag-right text remains more consistent from line to line, or perhaps because the eye tracks more easily from the end of differing length lines back to the beginning of the next line.
Rag-right style is best for sans-serif body typefaces. The squarish letters coupled with squared-off lines make justified sans serif doubly hard to read.
Next week: Avoid rough types, and The justification of space
Tags: centered, flush, justified, rag left, rag right, ragged, type alignment
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