Text alignment is relatively straight-forward a principle. After all the playing around with the alignment buttons in your favourite desktop publishing program however, there are some things that we should be informed on before we make a final choice on how to align a paragraph of text.

There are generally five options when aligning text; flush left, flush right, centred, justified and freeform. All of which I will elaborate on.

‘Flush left’ is also known as ‘ranged left’ or ‘ragged right’. This refers to the shape the paragraph of text makes when set in this alignment so the left of the paragraph will appear to have a hard line and a ragged right edge. As suspected, the `flush/ranged right’ or ‘ragged left’ is the exact opposite.

In by far the most of situations, we will generally set body copy to flush left as this is almost ubiquitous and very easy to read. Flush right is, or should be, used sparingly and only due to necessity.

The most obvious usage of flush right is when setting a small amount of text that is meant to sit close to the right edge of a page or screen. Our language is based on latin and is read from left to right, which means when we learn to read we subconsciously use the left edge as a visual anchor. When we set larger blocks of copy to have a ragged left we begin to realise that this will make it much harder to keep tabs on where we are at any point while reading.

Next is centred text. This can be a bone of contention in some situations. Especially as when we centre text it creates an appealing and interesting shape on an aesthetic level. An obvious statement you may think, but people often judge a piece of design without actually reading the content. If you believe that design is fundamentally about communication then you can see how this would be problematic.

The truth is similar to how we explained the cons of setting text with a ragged left earlier. It creates a barrier to comfortable reading. However, smaller paragraphs, headings, larger text and discreet pieces of information that fall out of the flow of a layout can be successfully set as centred. As always though, this is based upon the specific layout and other factors like typeface, and leading. The main reason for setting centred text is almost always aesthetic and not semantic.

Justified text can be seen most prevalently these days in newspapers. Justified text sets the paragraph with a flush left and a flush right. It does this by dynamically adjusting the space between words within every line of the paragraph making sure that the first and last word of every line are as flush as possible to both edges.

Justified text is the easiest alignment of all in terms of readability. It also has the most formal feel. You might find in some situations, when setting justified text, that in a line with a particularly small amount of words, like the the end of a paragraph, the space between the words becomes uncomfortably large. There is nothing that can be done about this in terms of settings (some programs do however have additional justification settings relating to how the last line is set). Newspapers have people called sub-editors who alleviate this problem by actually slightly rewriting the paragraph so that a few extra words close the gap. This is not always possible for pieces that we work on, but is an option to bear in mind.

The last is freeform. This is slightly misleading in that you will not find a button that will align text for you in a freeform fashion. Rather than it refers to the act of setting individual lines of copy at your own discretion which creates a pleasing aesthetic flow but does not adhere to any formal rules like having flush edges. This is obviously only meant to be used in situations where the information to be digested is extremely minimal and impact is the primary goal.