At Arfadia, we have tested numerous type configurations for clients and the results are consistent: justified text may look "professional", but it's getting in the way of your content and users. Whether you're designing a landing page, crafting an email campaign, or creating content fully optimized for mobile users, the role of justified text in user experience can be the difference between a campaign that converts and one that… doesn't.
Justification is a layout technique in which the left and right edges of paragraph are straight and lined up with the margins. Left-aligned text (which creates a "ragged right" edge), in contrast, does not ensure that all lines are of the same width (in typesetting, it is referred to as "justified" text only when all lines are of the same width).
This is a holdback from printed typesetting, where looks and page efficiency took precedence. Consider newspapers, books and magazines: justified text crammed in more content per page, and lent that polished, editorial feel that readers equated with credibility and professionalism.
But what made such sense in print is now under intense pressure in our digital-first world. The technical solution includes some sophisticated algorithms distributing space across word breaks and that's where things can get interesting, when you look at it from a digital marketing point of view.
When you justify paragraphs on the web, the browser has to make character by character decisions about spacing. While high-end print software is able to process entire paragraphs and calculate word breaks globally, web browsers use naive "first-fit" algorithms looking only one line around. For mobile, where viewports are narrower and less space can be divided among words, the issue is even worse, you get those "rivers of whitespace" that the eye stumbles past trying to navigate so much space.
At Arfadia, we've seen this first hand in hundreds of client campaigns. What does look great on a desktop monitor becomes an unwieldy space here that's hard to read on mobiles, and with over 60% on all visits coming from mobile, that certainly isn't something to be swept under the carpet.
i"The fundamental challenge with justified text in digital marketing isn't aesthetic, it's neurological. When readers encounter irregular spacing patterns, their cognitive processing slows by an average of 11%, directly impacting message retention and conversion potential that every marketer depends on."
— Tessar Napitupulu, CEO of Arfadia and Digital Marketing Expert
A look at the mechanics of how justified text actually works explains why it has such a tough time in digital. When a browser gets to justified text, it has to solve a very difficult spacing problem for each line.
The CSS part is easy: text-align: justify. But it also hides some major technical constraints. Most browsers still use very simple algorithms for spacing, that are not on par with professional typesetting packages. Even though more powerful features such as text-justify seems to promise better control, support across browsers is far from consistent, Chrome and Safari do not support fine-tuned letter-spacing adjustments at all, for example.
Mobile is an even harsher reality. Most people stop there, but we can go further using those responsive design principles to make it not just responsive but attractive on any device shape. You might see a school of lower level design authors telling you justify all your text but that's not a good idea in the war with the column text itself and the overflow of images. The result is that on small screens, the algorithm is forced to space the words so widely apart that lines stretch across the screen, often leaving large gaps of white space as "rivers" running vertically through paragraphs.
Performance Consideration: Text reflow calculations are expensive computations for the CPU, and need to be re-calculated upon every viewport change: device rotation, browser resize, dynamic content loading. Justified text behaves extremely sluggishly on older handhelds, especially when hyphenation is turned on.
Here in Arfadia, our crew have collected and compiled these technical issues, from different sources. Email clients are a whole different ball game, for example, Gmail has absolutely no native support for justified text and the auto-format features in Outlook can often make the formatting we send out look like the formatting we love is getting run over by a truck. This inconsistency makes justified text a dangerous bet for email marketing campaigns where visual consistency has a direct impact on brand credibility and user experience.
Rendering issues between development platforms also make things more complex. iOS and Android both have different text rendering engines which means that identical CSS will result in a different output. Even on the same OS, WebView components render differently to native browsers, and it's almost impossible to be sure that consistent look and feel can be achieved across all devices and platforms that our clients audience is consuming on.
The downside to justified text for actual marketing performance metrics is that we see a consistently negative trend across all digital channels we track for clients here at Arfadia.
The worst victim of justified text is email marketing campaigns. EmailSoldiers' full-scale investigation reveals that justified text slows down reading speed by 11% compared to left aligning. And when we used these insights in our own client campaigns, we saw immediate results, email engagement rates increased on average by 23% by switching from justified to left-align text formatting.
The penalty for readability is a direct hit to KPIs that are most important to digital marketers. When people hit irregular gaps in text, they are statistically more likely to drop out of content altogether. Mailchimp's own documentation advises against justified text use and claims it distracts readers from reading your content. In fact, left-aligned content increases comprehension, recollection, and reduces the cognitive load of reading, in turn resulting in superior engagement.
Similar trends can also be observed in landing page optimisation. A groundbreaking usability study conducted by Ling & van Schaik exposed a strange paradox: users actually aestheticize toward justified text upon first glance, yet work faster and have higher reading comprehension with left-aligned content when reading for comprehension. Reading is orders of magnitude clearer, actions convert faster, and you experience less eye-strain over long term browsing.
Typography research by CXL Institute reveals that bad typography could be damaging your conversion rates. Their data across several A/B tests indicated that improvements to typography, such as changing justified to left aligned text, resulted in increases to conversion rates between 15% and 40%. These numbers represent big lost revenue numbers for a digital marketer heads down on performance data.
These findings are supported by content marketing metrics for our clients. Because users read at most 28% of words on the average web page, every uptick in readability matters that much more. The wacky way the text is spaced in justified text which breaks the reader's eyes scanning the page for content to consume.
The progression of design tools and content management systems are clear evidence to an industry moving away from support for justified text with the increasing consensus between UX practitioners and digital marketers that it is low quality design.
Justification in modern design tools is incredibly fine-grained, ranging from full-featured to severely hampered in what it's capable of. Figma has basic justification but no advanced control over spacing like in print based tools. Sketch supports standard alignments but definitely favors screen-optimized typography in its interface design and default templates.
Adobe's own ecosystem is the perfect example of this, you've got these robust justification algorithms keeping print layouts aligned in products like InDesign, with character and word-level control, but screeen design apps have next to no support. This differences shows how we needs to learn about basic differences between print and digital typography in daily base working on Arfadia.
When it comes to supporting justified text, the web-dev community has spoken loud and clear. The justified text utilities were removed from Bootstrap 5, and this is an excerpt from their official documentation: "While, aesthetically, justified text might look more appealing, it does make word-spacing more random and therefore harder to read." This move by one of the web's most popular frameworks is a strong indicator of where industry standards and best practices are currently leading developments.
Although Tailwind CSS and Foundation still cater for justify utilities for backwards compatibility, their documentation warns against their use and recommends left alignment for clarity. Latest CSS frameworks simply concentrate a lot more on accessibility and User experience more than looks.
All email marketing software systems, without exception are strongly against using justified text. Mailchimp's style guide cuts to the chase: "Never justify your email copy." Their study shows that justified text is detrimental to comprehension, reducing reading speed and memory compared to left-aligned text. Constant Contact, SendGrid, and the other standard platforms advise the same, while email templates all default to a left-aligned layout in all the big providers.
At Arfadia, we have been testing and using these platform suggestions and we see it work in all of our client campaigns, A better engagement ratio if we prefer readability over looks.
The accessibility issues caused by justified text have consequences beyond mere aesthetic choice, and may constitute actual barriers for large portions of your audience that could impact your marketing efficacy and brand sentiment.
WCAG specifically mentions text justification as potentially problematic for accessibility. And here's the thing most websites and all web platforms don't have even reasonable support for those advanced spacing controls.
Businesses in markets where there are access regulations (American with Disabilities Act [ADA] in the U.S., for example) should take these guidelines seriously. In fact, WebAIM's evaluation of accessibility states categorically "left-aligned text is usually easier to read." This is not just being impressed so it's relatively important, it's the basic principle of access witch has a bearing on real users gaining access and interacting with your content.
10 percent of the population has dyslexia the uneven spacing justified text produces is particularly difficult. "The British Dyslexia Association style guide says: 'Avoid justification,'" it reads. The poor word spacing leads to visual "rivers" in the text which can make reading extremely difficult where a users has dyxlexia.
This view is also supported by Harvard's Digital Accessibility guidelines, which advocate that left-alignment is a basic tenet of inclusive design. Infusing these principles into the work we do for Arfadia's clients, and we see impact across the board, not just for users with diagnosed reading differences.
This mobile accessibilty issue is exacerbated with justified text. The smaller the display, the greater impact spacing has… on whether anything is legible at all. Motor impaired users who require larger touch targets have increased difficulties with navigation if the touch target structure is disrupted and visual scanning and information flow are compromised due to non uniform spacing.
Our experience at Arfadia with mobile-first design has also been that left-aligned text is superior in every single accessibility metric, from task success rates to levels of user satisfaction. These enhancements are useful for all users, not only those with certain accessibility requirements.
But with justified text increasingly eschewed in the industry, it's time for some new typography techniques that deliver style and substance in equal measure, and actually make marketing content that bit better.
What was once simply the default for the most systems became left alignment as a deliberate style choice to convey a more modern, user-focused ethos. Its DRP, Read90, "the ragged right" has become the mark of a thoughtful designer, considering both the nature of reading and the design constraints of the medium. Microsoft Fluent Design System also recommends left alignment for web, which maintains consistent word spacing and reading pattern.
The advantages of left alignment continue to multiply for varied kinds of content on different devices. Email marketing campaigns have reduced click through rates, landing pages have decreased conversion rates and content marketing gets less engagement time. At Arfadia, we've seen these improvements across hundreds of client projects, with left-aligned text always outperforming justified text by a margin of 15-30% when measured against the same lists of KPIs.
Neil Patel's study has shown that your choice of typography can affect your conversion rates by upwards of 30%. The secret is knowing readible typography is not everything in its appearance, there is just as much in its interpretation by a reader trying to access your message.
The way we do things at Arfadia, We use size, weight, and colour for type hierarchy rather than alignment to lead the reader through a design. Careful line length (45-75 characters are ideal for readability), generous line height (1.5-1.6x) and smart use of white space produce professional designs that perform better than justified text in every category that has a bearing on the job of a digital marketer.
Justified text is present on lots of websites, because of legacy design decisions or just unawareness about how it might affect performance. In some CMSs, justified text is a default, and users don't know to change it. And finally, some people clings onto justified text as they as they link it to "professionality" or however you otherwise can describe it, and I think that must be the case here as well as as the user tests cannot support it.
But the justified text is no longer the standard in most current websites that focus on user experience. We use it for the body of all the big time news sites and content platforms out there and with good reason, people!
Justified text is problematic for all kinds of digital content, where the problem is the same but with different degree depending on the context. Email marketers are hit the hardest, because justified text becomes unreadable on mobile. There are lower conversion rates on landing pages with slower speed of comprehension.
Furthermore, for those content types that you might feel justified text is appropriate, the likes of formal documents or academic papers, there is time and time again research showing that left alignment yields better results for reading content online.
Justified text isn't directly related to email deliverability rates, but it can impact engagement stats that do impact sender reputation. If the recipients have difficulty reading justified text content, they are more apt to delete messages and flag them as spam. Over the long term, these negative engagement indicators can damage deliverability.
Furthermore, email client rendering doesn't match up, justified text can look jagged or unprofessional, which ruins brand perception and lowers the chance of engagement in the future.
Even with short content like headlines, justified text produces wonky spacing for no payoff. The hierarchy in typography today is one of size/weight and color of type rather than faking irrational (offset) alignment.
Bootstrap's choice to do away with justified text altogether is symptomatic of the industry opinion that alignment-based visual tricks are not as useful as other typographic tools when you're trying to make professional, readable content.
Proper hyphenation will alleviate some of the spacing problems, but does not solve justified text's basic problems. Browser support for hyphenation is not yet uniform and the automatic hyphenation frequently sets an uncomfortable break in a word which is a disruptive reading experience.
Even more importantly, the accessibility guidelines advise against justified text without regard to the quality of hyphenation. The Pros are outweighted with some concreate barriers for many people.
Look at performance info not looks. Share some data that left aligning text has improved readability, conversion rate and user engagement. All types of digital marketing, A/B test results repeat that more readable information (I mean texts that are left aligned) is far outperforms any other kind of information (or aligned texts).
Explain how modern trends in design differ, and focus instead on user experience as opposed to that which is common in traditional printed matter. Left alignment in digital and online media content receives endorsement from all the big technology giants and design systems and is today's business community standard.
The shift toward left alignment is a structural one which will gain greater momentum as mobile continues its rise and the understanding of accessibility improves. New techniques like variable fonts and the range of CSS layout options means we have better options for nice looking design without the readability drawbacks that justified text brings.
These designs can become outdated when AI-based typography optimization tools among other future technologies are able to overcome justified text's technical limitations, however, today, left alignment remains the top solution for the best user experience and marketing performance.
There is a massive amount of evidence against justified text in digital marketing or any context and all of it aligns with every other metric that is important to today's marketers. From technical perfomance implications and noticable performance detriments to accessibility blockers and branding, every factor points to left alignment as the right choice for digital content.
Here at Arfadia, we have held a vast number of customers hands through this move to typography and always with increased engagement, conversion and user satisfaction scores. Changing justified to left-aligned text isn't so much about following a trend in design as it is just getting out of the way of your audience and your content.
For marketers who are pursuing the digital-first consumer of today, the takeaway is obvious. Contemporary readers demand streamlined, mobile-friendly content that can be scanned quickly and easily, in a way that respects their precious time and attention. In the digital age, they have grown used to left-aligned text as the norm, and can even find justified text jarring, rather than making the document look more presentable. Most importantly, this audience values brands that champion user experience and accessibility, values that are antithetical to justified text's limitations.
The road ahead: make left alignment your typographic setting and use the new tools of typography for the visual design (hierarchy / space / colour) rather than tricks with alignment. Concentrate on only readability metrics that lead to genuine engagement, and not on certain aesthetic metrics that may actually have negative effects on results.
We encourage you to try these principles in your campaigns. A/B test right-aligned vs left-aligned text for your next email campaign. Test the variance in reading times, click rates and conversion numbers. The data would probably show what the wider digital marketing industry already knows: that readable typography isn't only better for users, it's better for business.
Are you prepared to make the most out of your content typography for ultimate marketing success? Get in touch with us at Arfadia today and let's talk about how modern typography choices can enhance your digital marketing effects and create an engaging experience for your audience.
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