Align to page vs Align to left?

[Aiyoki]

So I recently got a comment on the first chapter of my Crimson Fields series and I'm curious about it as the commentor didn't really specify reasoning. It reads as follows:

"Always left align, NEVER align the text to extend to the whole line. Please don't leave it like this."

The person who posted this didn't leave any clarification about why they made this comment so I was wondering; Is there some technical problem with aligning to page vs aligning to left that might make it difficult for people to read the chapters?

 

[Prince_Azmiran_Myrian]

Some people don't like how it looks, and it can be a little distracting sometimes since it can mess with the spacing.

 

[Aiyoki]

Hm... I'll have to consider that then. I've read a lot of books and typically that's the alignment format they possess...

 

[Paul_Tromba]

Left align is considered the norm and expected way for fictional stories. This is mainly because it looks more appealing, is better for formatting with dialogue, and has been the professional standard of western fictional literature. Here is a link to a website on how to format a book. Align to page is usually reserved for academic papers as well as other forms of media such as blogs and letters. Align to page can also cause issues due to how paragraph breaks and spacing mess with the formatting, causing extended breaks and weird gaps.

 

[Aiyoki]

Not sure about that being the professional standard of western fictional literature... Every fictional book I purchased and "physically" own is aligned to page, not to left...

But I can see it being the norm for web based articles and books.

 

[Syringe]

On my end some of the sentences end up looking fractured like this:

And:

Granted, I'm using a PC monitor so it might look fine on mobile, but for PC users it can look a little weird. Also, it kind of makes everything one big, chunky wall of text. Don't expect most of your readers to have been exposed to normal books. Expect that they've only been reading webnovels/online stuff so you need to format it in a way that's easy to digest.

But honestly, no harm done.

 

[Aiyoki]

I aligned to left. does it still look that way?

 

[Syringe]

I aligned to left. does it still look that way?

I combed through and found that only Chap 8 & 9 are aligned to left (and it looks fine). I'm assuming the others are also updated but it just hasn't shown on my end. If it's updated on your end already, then it's all good.

Edit: I haven't noticed that anything's changed yet after several hours. Are you sure you clicked 'update' on the top right when editing the chapters?

 

[Paul_Tromba]

Not sure about that being the professional standard of western fictional literature... Every fictional book I purchased and "physically" own is aligned to page, not to left...

But I can see it being the norm for web based articles and books.

I did a bit more research and it turns out that aligning to page is not what is used for traditional publishing but instead is aligned to paragraph or is left aligned with justified paragraph alignments. Double checked some of my physical books and this is the case for most.

With publishing the format doesn't have to be the same as everyone else's as there are many types. For publishing there are several options though, align to page is not a recommended one. Here is another link to a website on book formatting for a reference. https://selfpublishingadvice.org/10-typesetting-rules-for-indie-authors/

All in all it's entirely up to personal preference. These are just some of the common and expected formatting styles for traditional and indie publishing of physical books.

 

[Gibbs505]

I always use Justify.

 

[CubicleHermit]

Fully justified works much better with a narrow, two-or-more-column format (think newspapers, many magazines, and academic papers) than with a full-width page, and has the added benefit of keeping a mostly-consistent width to the space between columns (possibly completely, depending on paragraph indents) which makes it easier to read.

On a full-width page, it has no benefit that I can see, although it will look better to some eyes. It also makes hyphenating long words at the end of the line nearly mandatory as otherwise the length of between-words spacing can start looking weird.