What should be the format, justified or left align, in setting news paragraphs?

Question

I always type with left aligned paragraphs so not to distract the eyes and thoughts of my readers. I dont like having wide spaces between words when I justify my texts. I was advised by my professor to avoid justification and I myself is comfortable doing it this way. But my colleagues insisted for justistified texts because it looks neat and good and not to mind the wide white spaces between words. Are there writing rules out there as to what standard should be followed and what makes writing best? Thank you!!

Answer 1

In the free-wheeling, general world, there are no rules. I also prefer aligned left (aka "rag right"), for about the same reasons you do: encountering an irregular space between words while reading is awkward, while having an irregular open space at the right side of the page is actually kind of interesting-looking.

In the '60s, there was actually a little bit of a typographical revolution in publishing, as magazines and books started using rag-right instead of justified. For awhile, it was a very au courant look.

There are some situations in which there is a standard: newspapers are almost always justified. Perhaps because they have so many columns: it would be difficult to find the left side of a middle column if the space to the left of it were variable.

On the other hand, anything set in a non-proportional font (like Courier, which is essentially an imitation of an old-fashioned typewriter) should NEVER be justified, because the regular one-character-one-unit layout looks awful if you start introducing bizarre white space to it. About the only situation in which non-proportional fonts are de rigeur is screenplays, so if you're not writing them, just use Times Roman or another nice proportional font.