Should you justify text on websites?

Recently a client asked us to apply ‘Justify Text’. I had to admit I didn’t know what it was. Do you know what it is? It took a bit of time and explanation from the client for me to realise that ‘Justify Text’ is the name for this thing in the boxed in red:

I know it as that icon in Microsoft Word which, when pressed, spreads the words out across a page to avoid white spaces. It gives it a cleaner newspaper feel so that there are no odd white spaces on the edges of the columns.

Officially Microsoft says ‘When you justify text in Word, you give your text straight edges on both sides of the paragraph. Justifying extends each line of your text to the left and right margins. Justifying text might make the last line of text in a paragraph considerably shorter than the other lines’.

The other text alignment options are ‘Left Align’, ‘Centred’, ‘Right Align’ and ‘Justified’, which are illustrated well in LinkedIn by a Mark Rosen post as follows:

You can see the ‘Justified’ option is the neatest when viewed like a newspaper column.

However what’s odd is that in platforms like WordPress they did not even have a ‘Justify Text’ option. They had ‘Left Justify’ and ‘Right Justify’ but no ‘Justify Text’. When I did some research I found out two sides to the coin.

The first side was for the ‘haters’ of ‘Justify Text’. www.latevaweb.com recommended avoiding it and ‘embracing’ left justification with ‘enthusiasm’. They stated the website will ‘enjoy proper eligibility’ and look more ‘modern and up-to-date’.

www.mity.com.au went further to say ‘Justified Text’ is worse on large screen devices like tablets or desktop computers as they ‘Throw in typically larger spaces between words and reading gets even harder’. They highlight that traditional print media like newspapers and magazines have ‘specialist publishing and set-out software to make sure the spacing is correct…and the text is pleasing to read’. Moreover the key striking point is that you don’t typically see ‘Justify Text’ on digital media.

If you look at the example below from the www.mity.com.au article, its rare to encounter this style of alignment on a website, blog, or ecommerce site.

Ok so that’s one side of the coin. The other side of the coin are those that are ‘lovers’ of ‘Justify Text’. This argument isn’t necessarily shown in the articles or blogs, but in the multiple options out there for bringing ‘Justify Text’ back onto the platform. WordPress used to have ‘Justify Text’ as an option in past versions but it was removed in the latest version. To get it back we found that all you need to do is:

1. Install the ‘Classic Editor’ plugin
2. Install the ‘Re-add text underline and justify’ plugin
3. In the WordPress dashboard under Settings > Writing make sure the ‘Default editor for all users’ is set to ‘Classic Editor’ and the ‘Editor style’ is set to ‘Default – Re-add underline & justify buttons’.
4. Change the text on the page and you will see the ‘Justifiy Text’ icon appear as an option when editing the text. Highlight the text that you want justified and the alignment will be updated.
5. If you wish to switch back to ‘Block Editor’ mode simply select ‘Block Editor’ under Settings > Writing > Default editor for all users. The Justified alignment will remain.

So whether you are a lover or a hater, there are options for both. At Kalora Digital the customer always needs to be informed and the customer is always right! Good luck in playing with your justification and feel free to reach out to us if you need any assistance with your website.

Comment below if you are hater or lover of ‘Justify Text’ and why.