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typesetting Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or '' glyphs'' in digital systems representing '' characters'' (letters and other symbols).Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random ...
and page layout, alignment or range is the setting of text flow or
image An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...
placement relative to a
page Page most commonly refers to: * Page (paper), one side of a leaf of paper, as in a book Page, PAGE, pages, or paging may also refer to: Roles * Page (assistance occupation), a professional occupation * Page (servant), traditionally a young ma ...
,
column A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member. ...
(measure), table cell, or tab (and often to an image above it or under it). The type alignment setting is sometimes referred to as text alignment, text justification, or type justification. The edge of a page or column is known as a '' margin'', and a gap between columns is known as a ''gutter''.


Basic variations

There are four basic typographic alignments: * flush left—the text is aligned along the left margin or gutter, also known as ''left-aligned'', ''ragged right'' or ''ranged left''; * flush right—the text is aligned along the right margin or gutter, also known as ''right-aligned'', ''ragged left'' or ''ranged right''; * justified—text is aligned along the left margin, with letter-spacing and word-spacing adjusted so that the text falls flush with both margins, also known as ''fully justified'' or ''full justification''; * centered—text is aligned to neither the left nor right margin; there is an even gap on each side of each line. Alignment does not change the direction in which text is read; however, text direction may determine the most commonly used alignment for that
script Script may refer to: Writing systems * Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire * Script (styles of handwriting) ** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of ha ...
.


Flush left

In English and most European languages where words are read left-to-right, text is usually aligned "flush left", meaning that the text of a paragraph is aligned on the left-hand side with the right-hand side ragged. This is the
default Default may refer to: Law * Default (law), the failure to do something required by law ** Default (finance), failure to satisfy the terms of a loan obligation or failure to pay back a loan ** Default judgment, a binding judgment in favor of ei ...
style of text alignment on the
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
for left-to-right text. Quotations are often indented. Flush left might also be used in very narrow columns, where full justification would produce too much whitespace between characters or words on some lines.


Flush right

In other languages that read text right-to-left, such as
Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
,
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
and
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
, text is commonly aligned "flush right". Additionally, flush-right alignment is used to set off special text in English, such as attributions to authors of quotes printed in books and magazines, or text associated with an image to its right. Flush right is often used when formatting tables of data. It is used to align text to the right margin; in this case, the left ends will be unequal.


Justified

A common type of text alignment in print media is "justification", where the spaces between words and between
glyphs A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
or
letters Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alpha ...
are stretched or compressed in order to align both the left and right ends of consecutive lines of text. When using justification, it is customary to treat the last line of a paragraph separately by simply left or right aligning it, depending on the language direction. Lines in which the spaces have been stretched beyond their normal width are called ''loose lines'', while those whose spaces have been compressed are called ''tight lines''.


Centered

Text can also be "centered", or symmetrically aligned along an axis in the middle of a column. This is often used for the title of a work, headlines, and for poems and songs. As with flush-right alignment, centered text is often used to present data in tables. Centered text is considered less readable for a body of text made up of multiple lines because the ragged starting edges make it difficult for the reader to track from one line to the next. Centered text can also be commonly found on signs, flyers, and similar documents where grabbing the attention of the reader is the main focus, or visual appearance is important and the overall amount of centered text is small. Some modern typesetting programs offer four justification options: ''left justify'', ''right justify'', ''center justify'' and ''full justify''. These variants respectively specify whether the full lines of a paragraph are aligned on the left or the right, centered (edges not aligned), or fully justified (spread over the whole column width). In programs that do not offer multiple kinds of justification, typically only left (for left-to-right languages) or right (for right-to-left languages) justification is provided.


Examples

The following table displays the difference between a justified (flush left and flush right) and a flush left (and ragged right) text.


Problems with justification

Justification sometimes leads to typographic anomalies. One example: when justification is used in narrow columns, extremely large spaces may appear between words on lines with only two or three words. Another example: when the spaces between words line up approximately above one another in several loose lines, a distracting river of white space may appear.Discussion of rivers and methods of avoiding them
/ref> Rivers appear in right-aligned, left-aligned and centered settings too, but are more likely to appear in justified text, because of the additional word spacing. Since there is no added white space built into a typical
full stop The full stop (Commonwealth English), period ( North American English), or full point , is a punctuation mark. It is used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamatio ...
(period), other than that above the full stop itself, full stops contribute to the river effect in a limited way. At one time, common word-processing software adjusted only the spacing between words, which was a source of the river problem. Modern word processing packages and professional publishing software significantly reduce the river effect by adjusting also the spacing between characters. Additionally, these systems use advanced digital typography techniques such as automatically choosing among different
glyphs A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
for the same character and slightly stretching or shrinking the character in order to better fill the line. The technique of glyph scaling or microtypography has been implemented by
Adobe InDesign Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing and page layout designing software application produced by Adobe Inc. and first released in 1999. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers, presentations, ...
and more recent versions of pdfTeX. The problem of loose lines is reduced by using
hyphen The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes ( figure ...
ation. With older typesetting systems and WYSIWYG word processors, this was done manually: the compositor or author added hyphenation on a case-by-case basis. Currently, most typesetting systems (also called layout programs) and modern word processors hyphenate automatically, using a hyphenation algorithm. In addition, professional typesetting programs almost always provide for the use of an exception dictionary, in part because no algorithm hyphenates all words correctly, and in part because different publishers will follow different dictionaries. Different publishers may also have different rules about permissible hyphenation. Most publishers follow a basic system such as the ''
Chicago Manual of Style (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
'' or Oxford style, but will overlay their own "house style", which further restricts permissible hyphenation. Word-processing software usually uses a different kind of justification when dealing with
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
texts. Using ''
kashida Kashida or Kasheeda ( fa, کشیده; "extended", "stretched", "lengthened") is a type of justification in the Arabic language and in some descendant cursive scripts. In contrast to white-space justification, which increases the length of a lin ...
'', characters or glyphs are elongated instead of stretching the white spaces. Another technique sometimes used is word heaping.


History

Justification has been the preferred setting of type in many Western languages through the history of movable type. This is due to the classic Western manuscript book page being built of a column or two columns, which is considered to look "best" if it is even-margined on the left and right. The classical Western column did not rigorously justify, but came as close as feasible when the skill of the penman and the character of the manuscript permitted. Historically, both scribal and typesetting traditions took advantage of abbreviations ( sigla),
ligatures Ligature may refer to: * Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure ** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry * Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
, and swashes to help maintain the rhythm and
colour Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associa ...
of a justified line. Its use has only waned somewhat since the early 20th century through the advocacy of the typographer Jan Tschichold's book ''Asymmetric Typography'' and the freer typographic treatment of the Bauhaus,
Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...
, and Russian constructivist movements. Not all "flush left" settings in traditional typography were identical. In flush left text, words are separated on a line by the default word space built into the font. Continuous casting typesetting systems such as the Linotype were able to reduce the jaggedness of the right-hand sides of adjacent lines of flush left composition by inserting self-adjusting space bands between words to evenly distribute white space, taking excessive space that would have occurred at the end of the line and redistributing it between words. This feature is also available in desktop publishing systems, although most now default to more sophisticated approaches. Graphic designers and typesetters using desktop systems also have the option to adjust word and letter spacing, or "tracking", on a manual line-by-line basis to achieve more even overall spacing. Some modern desktop publishing programs, such as
Adobe InDesign Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing and page layout designing software application produced by Adobe Inc. and first released in 1999. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers, presentations, ...
, evaluate the effects of all the different possible line-break choices on the entire paragraph, to choose the one that creates the least variance from the ideal spacing while justifying the lines (so as to reduce
rivers A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wat ...
); this also gives the least uneven edge when set with a ragged margin.


See also

*
Word wrap Line breaking, also known as word wrapping, is breaking a section of text into lines so that it will fit into the available width of a page, window or other display area. In text display, line wrap is continuing on a new line when a line is ful ...
* Runaround (typography)


References

{{Typography terms Typography