How to Justify Text in HTML

Five Reasons Justified Text Is Harder to Read

Based on documented scientific studies

Studies have found that we read words on a screen more slowly than a printed page. Screen-optimized fonts like Georgia and Verdana help, as do book-quality screens like Kindle, but this holds true for regular websites.

Therefore, every little readability issue becomes more of a problem on the web.

• 1Justified text eliminates the ragged edge, the uneven lines of text on the right-hand margin. Our brains use this uneven line to keep track of our place. WIthout it, it's like trying to find one house in a block of identical rowhouses.
• 2Justified text introduces uneven spacing between letters and words to pad out the line. The brain has more trouble processing unevenly-spaced letters than evenly-spaced letters, since it's slightly less clear which gaps are ends of words. "Non-uniform spacing between words decreases reading speed by as much as 11 percent (Trollip and Sales 1986)" -- Source
• 3Hyphenated words at the end of justified lines force the brain to slow down, locate and reconstruct the halves of words split over two lines.
• 4Extra spaces between words gives more chances for these spaces to line up, creating the well-known phenomenon of "rivers" in justified text. The vertical rivers tend to lead the eye up and down and sometimes cause the eye to "trip" onto the line below after the gap.
• 5Readability problems are magnified for children, some elderly, dyslexics, and all kinds of people with minor vision or reading disabilities.