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Geoff Hart wrote (in part):
> Because full-justification is significantly more space-efficient, all
> else being equal, and is thus cheaper to print for long books and
> large print runs. Think of it this way (all numbers purely
> hypothetical): even if you allow hyphenation with ragged-right text
> (not everyone does), you're creating 2 to 5 characters of blank space
> per line (call it 4 for convenience). If you don't allow hyphenation,
> or are too lazy or too deadline-crazed to ensure proper word breaks,
> you create even more white space. Multiply that by the number of
> lines per page (call it 25 for convenience), and you're losing 100
> characters per page -- about 20 words. This means that for every 25
> pages of ragged-right text, you require an additional page. For a 500
> page manual, that's 20 extra pages you have to print -- about a 4%
> increase.
Sorry, but I don't buy this argument, for the simple reason that the
primary method of achieving justification is by expanding spacing of
the character on each line so that the line extends all the way to
the right margin. In most desktop applications, all of the expansion
occurs in the inter-word spacing, causing rivers and degading
readability (according to studies cited in the STC paper that was
cited in this thread). Better tools expand the inter-letter spacing
within words as well as the inter-word spacing, but it's still an
expansion process. The number of letters and words per line and
where the lines break stays the same. The only time you start to
gain in the number of words per page is when you allow hyphenation
or when the justification routine both condenses and expands the
character and word spacing. But the amount that the text can
be squeezed without seriously affecting readability is very limited,
so there's not all that much to be gained in most texts.
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