Justify MS Word

[astroid88]

Does anyone use the alignment setting "justify" in their papers? I'm used to "left align". 

I never knew it existed until now. I had a reader just recommend that I use it, but it feels kind of sleezy, since it reduces my page count. I don't want to make it seem like I'm trying crunch a bunch of stuff in. 

Edited November 18, 2017 by astroid88

[dr. t]

Yes, I use it for everything I write. It looks neater.

[AP]

I've always used it. I hate left alignment. Justified is neater and more pleasant to the eye. 

[Eigen]

How does it reduce your page count?

All justify does is spread word spacing so you the lines stretch to the edge of the page- it shouldn't change anything about the number of words you can fit on a page, and so shouldn't effect the page count at all. 

That said, most journal articles in my field are justified because it looks neater, and I use it for most things I write. 

[astroid88]

19 minutes ago, Eigen said:

How does it reduce your page count?

All justify does is spread word spacing so you the lines stretch to the edge of the page- it shouldn't change anything about the number of words you can fit on a page, and so shouldn't effect the page count at all. 

That said, most journal articles in my field are justified because it looks neater, and I use it for most things I write. 

Not sure how. I wrote a 50 paper using left align, but switching it knocked off about 2 pages. 

[Eigen]

That would be unusual unless you have something changed in the defaults settings, or you have words wrapped instead of line-specific. Shouldn't be just the justification.

[TakeruK]

In my field, justified is the preferred alignment as well, for the same reasons everyone else said.

To figure out why it's cutting off 2 pages, you should identify one example line that gets removed due to the switch from left-aligned to justified. Then, see if anything is weirdly formatted about that line. Look at a few other lines where this happens to see if you can find the pattern.

If left-aligned is 50 pages and justified is 48 pages, I would bet that you really only have 48 pages and it's some weird formatting issue with left-aligned that adds two extra pages. So, it's more likely that left-aligned is "inflating" your page count rather than the other way around.

[Neist]

I could never bring myself to use justify, but I worked as a graphic designer, and the spacing of justify profoundly offends my sense of aesthetics.  

I don't necessarily see anything particularly wrong with it, but it might make a piece of writing more difficult to read. Something to think about for the sake of accessibility of others.

[Eigen]

I've heard the argument that justified text has accessibility problems, but I haven't seen any studies to back it up- do you have any links you'd recommend, Neist?

Everything I can find just has "experts" saying it's harder to read, which I have a hard time swallowing without any evidence. 

Most of the argument against justified text from an accessibility standpoint seems to be when it's (a) coupled with font that's already too small, or (b) when it's poorly done so that you have huge white spaces in lines. 

One of the reasons I like it is I find it helps hugely with document organization. Poorly left justified text can make it hard to see paragraph breaks, and requires first-line indents. Justified text makes it easy to have breaks between paragraphs that are easy to identify. 

[TakeruK]

2 hours ago, Neist said:

I could never bring myself to use justify, but I worked as a graphic designer, and the spacing of justify profoundly offends my sense of aesthetics.  

I don't necessarily see anything particularly wrong with it, but it might make a piece of writing more difficult to read. Something to think about for the sake of accessibility of others.

I would guess that it comes from journals that use multi-column formats since I can't imagine that looking good with left-alignment. But maybe you have a counter-example? Then, for better or for worse, this use of justified alignment extended even to single column format.

There are lots of things I don't like about academic writing/formatting but I just treat it as a constraint to work within. I try to reword sentences to avoid long whitespace breaks.

That said, like Eigen, I would be very interested to see any examples/sources that show this could lead to accessibility issues. In that case, I would certainly argue for breaking "tradition"/"conventional" for better accessibility!

[Neist]

On 11/21/2017 at 9:41 AM, Eigen said:

I've heard the argument that justified text has accessibility problems, but I haven't seen any studies to back it up- do you have any links you'd recommend, Neist? 

 

Unfortunately, I only have anecdotal experience with myself. My vision is actually quite horrible. I have to use text-to-speech for most of my reading or my reading speed is too slow for the pace necessary at a graduate level. Justification just makes it worse because it makes the text more difficult to track fluidly. That said, a lot of justification nowadays functions better than it used to. It doesn't tend to insert giant chunks of space within lines.

On 11/21/2017 at 11:28 AM, TakeruK said:

I would guess that it comes from journals that use multi-column formats since I can't imagine that looking good with left-alignment. But maybe you have a counter-example? Then, for better or for worse, this use of justified alignment extended even to single column format.

 

Hm.. I'll think about it and see if I can't think of a good example. I don't have one off-hand. Sorry!  

A lot of typesetters will adjust the text with hyphenation if it looks too "chunky." Or maybe they'll imperceptibly adjust the kerning. A little raggedness isn't a huge problem, and I imagine it's probably more of an issue in the sciences, where authors may utilize longer and more technical words. 

[AP]

On 11/21/2017 at 10:10 AM, Neist said:

I could never bring myself to use justify, but I worked as a graphic designer, and the spacing of justify profoundly offends my sense of aesthetics.  

I don't necessarily see anything particularly wrong with it, but it might make a piece of writing more difficult to read. Something to think about for the sake of accessibility of others.

Yes, but in word your can set it for hyphenating long words so that there isn't too much spacing between words.  

[Sigaba]

I am not a fan of justified text.

[dr. t]

On 11/30/2017 at 8:24 PM, Sigaba said:

I am not a fan of justified text.

Justify yourself!

[TakeruK]

4 hours ago, telkanuru said:

Justify yourself!

I originally clicked on this thread thinking the OP would be asking others to justify the use of MS Word!

[Averroes MD]

I used to use justified, but then I took a class on academic writing and they told us that MLA requires left aligned, so I stopped using justified. Now, multiple people have told me to use justified, so now I'm just confused.

[Eigen]

1 hour ago, Averroes MD said:

I used to use justified, but then I took a class on academic writing and they told us that MLA requires left aligned, so I stopped using justified. Now, multiple people have told me to use justified, so now I'm just confused.

MLA is one of a very large number of academic writing formats. Different standards require different things.

[Averroes MD]

8 hours ago, Eigen said:

MLA is one of a very large number of academic writing formats. Different standards require different things.

Yeah I know, but these are people who are reading my paper and must know/see that it is in MLA format. And they are very highly qualified readers.

[TakeruK]

46 minutes ago, Averroes MD said:

Yeah I know, but these are people who are reading my paper and must know/see that it is in MLA format. And they are very highly qualified readers.

All of this just depends on the required format for whatever work you're submitting, doesn't it? There is no objective "right" answer.

If the requirement is to use MLA format, then you can just ignore the suggestions for justified text (or better yet, respectfully decline their suggestion and refer them to the format requirement).

If the readers are the ones setting the required format, then it just makes sense to do whatever they ask, even if it's not MLA format, since there isn't a requirement to use MLA format.

If there are no format requirements set at all, then it just makes sense to me to use whatever format works best for the people involved. Depending on the nature of the relationship with your readers and the nature of your work, it might make more sense to choose a style yourself and explain it or do what they ask for, or some in-between made-up format that works for you and your readers (e.g. "MLA format but with justification")

[Neist]

On 11/29/2017 at 10:48 PM, AP said:

Yes, but in word your can set it for hyphenating long words so that there isn't too much spacing between words.  

I did not know you could do that. That's good to know.  

[guest56436]

On 12/4/2017 at 7:45 AM, TakeruK said:

I originally clicked on this thread thinking the OP would be asking others to justify the use of MS Word!

I did as well. And I was ready to say there's not much of a justification haha, latex takes like a day to learn and is vastly superior.

[dr. t]

14 hours ago, Comparativist said:

I did as well. And I was ready to say there's not much of a justification haha, latex takes like a day to learn and is vastly superior.

Alas that journals insist on submission in Word.

[TheHessianHistorian]

On 11/20/2017 at 12:47 PM, Eigen said:

How does it reduce your page count?

All justify does is spread word spacing so you the lines stretch to the edge of the page- it shouldn't change anything about the number of words you can fit on a page, and so shouldn't effect the page count at all. 

That said, most journal articles in my field are justified because it looks neater, and I use it for most things I write. 

I was skeptical, but I turned my 32-page senior thesis from a left-justified into a justified document and it did somehow shave off about 5 lines. Not much change, but it somehow does make a bit of a difference. I am thinking that justifying the document squeezes the spaces between words a little smaller on some lines, and that must be where the saved space comes in.