There is no mention of it in the post. If words (in any language) can be arbitrarily long and columns can be arbitrarily narrow, we will need to solve for this anyway.
Even without those extremes, I feel that there will always be place for the good old hypen when displaying or printing text for the main purpose of readability. No need to max out on perfect "look" in every application of text.
In fact in many places one might even find columns with jagged right edges more readable -- letting you visually distinguish each line from the one above/below it easily by length alone -- and may even lend a certain aesthetic character that is the opposite of mechanical / boring / machine produced / sterile.
Of course not negating the need for a well implemented method without bugs to justify text correctly when the use case demands it.
I’m looking at the comparison [0] and the `pretty` example is hyphenated, while greedy is not. Not sure it’s fair to compare them like that, considering we’ve had `hyphens: auto` for a while now.
Edit: it’s actually vice versa! Which I should have known because the very next paragraph says:
> But the “smart” algorithm decides to add an entire line to it, which requires inflating all the white space proportionally.
Which is exactly how the example on the right looks.
> We are getting closer and closer to the cutting-edge XV-century technology. Beautiful paragraphs!
While the broader point is fine, the example to me is just bad to me: very narrow column with a lot of hyphens and identical width/no variety making it harder to anchor your eye (though colored letters are awesome and play this role)
Ok, bad rag is bad, but the ancient text goes overboard in the other direction. This looks close to the form-over-function vibe.
The irony is that we've spent decades and quite some resources to perfect fixed text layout in general and text justification in particular (the immaculate rectangle with homogenous gray values, hanging punctuation, all that jazz) only to find:
1. Fixed layout isn't gonna cut it
2. Justification isn't that important anyways
To anyone who came of age on the internet in the last three decades justified text just looks strange. I say that coming from the typography nerd camp. No matter if we like it or not, in the end flush left and flush right has lost and it will not come back regardless what browsers implement.
Prettyness is important, but legibility is more important.
I don't know why we're still obsessed with right justification? In 1450 it made a lot of sense to try to squeeze the most text on a page, but today it isn't?
Justify is not only useless but it's also responsible for creating all those white spaces of various length, which are annoying enough by themselves, but which can also create "rivers" which become an incredible distraction.
The first thing I do with a new ebook is to modify it in Calibre so that it's left-align instead of justify.
Maybe "pretty" is a solution, but non-justify is simpler, and readily available.
9 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 27.5 ms ] threadThere is no mention of it in the post. If words (in any language) can be arbitrarily long and columns can be arbitrarily narrow, we will need to solve for this anyway.
Even without those extremes, I feel that there will always be place for the good old hypen when displaying or printing text for the main purpose of readability. No need to max out on perfect "look" in every application of text.
In fact in many places one might even find columns with jagged right edges more readable -- letting you visually distinguish each line from the one above/below it easily by length alone -- and may even lend a certain aesthetic character that is the opposite of mechanical / boring / machine produced / sterile.
Of course not negating the need for a well implemented method without bugs to justify text correctly when the use case demands it.
Edit: it’s actually vice versa! Which I should have known because the very next paragraph says:
> But the “smart” algorithm decides to add an entire line to it, which requires inflating all the white space proportionally.
Which is exactly how the example on the right looks.
[0]: https://matklad.github.io/2026/02/14/justifying-text-wrap-pr...
While the broader point is fine, the example to me is just bad to me: very narrow column with a lot of hyphens and identical width/no variety making it harder to anchor your eye (though colored letters are awesome and play this role)
Ok, bad rag is bad, but the ancient text goes overboard in the other direction. This looks close to the form-over-function vibe.
> WebKit devs, you are awesome for shipping this feature ahead of everyone else...
Um, no? Chrome shipped this feature in 2023: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/css-text-wrap-pretty
Safari isn't early shipping this, they're late. Though not as late as Firefox, admittedly.
[1]: http://www.nicemice.net/par/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_(typography)
1. Fixed layout isn't gonna cut it
2. Justification isn't that important anyways
To anyone who came of age on the internet in the last three decades justified text just looks strange. I say that coming from the typography nerd camp. No matter if we like it or not, in the end flush left and flush right has lost and it will not come back regardless what browsers implement.
I don't know why we're still obsessed with right justification? In 1450 it made a lot of sense to try to squeeze the most text on a page, but today it isn't?
Justify is not only useless but it's also responsible for creating all those white spaces of various length, which are annoying enough by themselves, but which can also create "rivers" which become an incredible distraction.
The first thing I do with a new ebook is to modify it in Calibre so that it's left-align instead of justify.
Maybe "pretty" is a solution, but non-justify is simpler, and readily available.