Re. Left justify and italics?

[geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA]

     Marilyn Barrett O'Leary notes that <paraphrase> "left justification is
     more visually interesting [than fully justified text], that two
     columns are easier to handle than one, and that italics is harder to
     read than boldfacing."

     Without intending to pick on Marilyin (these statements are commonly
     quoted indeed), there are indeed cases where each of these
     generalisations is true, but they're too general to accept at face
     value. Let's take them one at a time:

     1. Left justification can indeed be more effective than full
     justification because it can eliminate the distracting rivers (white
     space) and hyphenation that often arise in fully justified text.
     However, the "ragged right" nature of left-justified text annoys some
     (not all) readers every bit as much as fully-justified text annoys
     others (I've discovered this from interviewing readers during my own
     design work), and can also pose problems with hyphenation. Studies of
     typography tend to reveal that neither form of justification has any
     significant advantage over the other when the design is carried out
     competently (rather than left to the software's defaults to execute).

     2. The number of columns is, by itself, a meaningless statistic.
     What's important is line length. Typically, a line should be
     approximately 2-3 "alphabets" wide... about 50-70 characters. Based on
     the font size you've chosen, this may result in one, two or even three
     columns. More to the point, a layout with one-column of text and a
     companion column of graphics in the margin can be very effective
     indeed. My numerical estimate arises from the way the human eye scans
     across lines in "saccadic (sp?) leaps" and picks up words during
     reading; I haven't seen studies in other languages, particularly
     non-Roman alphabets, but I'd guess the actual optimal width would vary
     slightly based on average word lengths in those languages.

     3. I'd agree that "script" (and other ornamental) fonts are less
     legible than boldface, but most italic cuttings of body text differ so
     little from the roman version that I expect there is no significant
     difference between the two in legibility. Boldface fonts tend to be
     quite heavy, and thus less legible; worse yet, overuse of boldface
     makes words stand out on the page as if you'd been writing with a
     leaky fountain pen. Boldface tends to create a stronger visual
     contrast with the body text than is desirable, thus it draws the eye
     strongly and distractingly... which is why it's used predominantly for
     headings, where the goal is to draw the eye during skimming of the
     page. Italics stand out enough to indicate a change in the role of the
     word, but not so strongly that they draw the eye unproductively;
     that's why they're most commonly used in body text.

 --Geoff Hart     @8^{)}     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
 Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.

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