Do you justify your web copy? Cease and desist this web practice at once. FYI—this is justified text.

This isn’t just a rant of some dude (aka me), it’s a growing trend (maybe not the right catregorization) I’ve noticed recently.

And it scares me.

‘Justified typography creates order and is essentially “no-brainer” typography,’ a good point made for justification. However, justified text makes for excessive interword spacing, or, spaces that look larger than they should.

In [traditional] print, this is not a big deal. In fact, many typographers enjoy the challenge of adjusting the type to make it more readable and getting rid of these excessive spaces.

However, on the web (as many designers / developers [should] know), we lose A LOT of control over our creations. As much as I don’t love widows on my websites, I don’t agonize over them.

While a justified text layout might fit better in a perfect world, much more often than not what we’re given as a result is unacceptable. It’s much harder to read, much less aesthetically pleasing, and it looks very amatuerish.

If you just can’t (i.e. no CSS control) give us this, or if you just don’t want to (i.e. are stubborn¹), just do me a favor. Don’t have any sentences that run longer than 66 characters, please. This, combined with justified text makes for an incredibly unpleasant reading experience.

The justified text interword spacing is up to five (5x) times wider than the normal ragged text at certain points in the copy.

My point is, typography can be very personal and I get this, but when it comes to web copy, you really should be thinking of those reading your content. If it’s harder to read because you think it’s better typography (or more traditional), then you’re only hurting your brand, your content, and your readers eyes.

CSS3 has a new property text-justify. This comes with eight values, and if you are set upon using justified text, then I suggest using newspaper.

** Closing Thoughts **

Don’t do it. Set it to ragged, either left or right, and be done with it.

¹—I can be very stubborn about certain things on the web as well, like over using drop-shadows for one. Info for this found on Upper&Lower Case Mag, and WebTypography.net.