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Comment by hypertele-Xii | Hacker News Reader

It's explained on the linked page, under 'typography':

> When your eyes read to the end of a line of text, they have to jump to the beginning of the next one. Left-justified text causes all lines to start at the same vertical, making your eyes sometimes miss the jump and begin reading a wrong line. This is why you're sometimes reading the same line twice by accident. By right-justifying instead, the left edge of the text is made variying, and your eyes have an easier time picking the correct next line.

You actually experience physical pain?

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Hey dude, I just want to give you some feedback as an outside observer.

You advanced your own website as somewhere between a solid execution and an ideal for minimalistic design. Virtually every reply you've gotten has been some variation of "Wow, I don't much like this design". You reply to each of the replies insisting you're right and demanding people explain to you how you're not. People are taking time out of their day to give you (admittedly critical) feedback. It probably doesn't work that well to demand more of their time. When you send signals that you're not internalizing the feedback you're getting, people are going to be loath to offer more.

It's OK if you don't want to incorporate feedback because you're happy with your work, but the context under which you linked it is such that it's perfectly natural people are going to give it to you unvarnished.

Anyone who submits critical feedback must be prepared to receive critical feedback in return. I'm not sure what you're saying. This is a discussion forum. Discussion unavoidably demands participants to take some time to participate.

You legitimately can't say I didn't warn you.

I think notafraudster might be suggesting that you're lacking self-awareness because you seem very defensive when it comes to your design decisions instead of really listening to people's complaints.

Just as an example, I find right aligned text hard to read, no matter your rational behind it. Might be because I'm not used to it, but who is?

> Might be because I'm not used to it, but who is?

Exactly. Only one way to find out: Somebody try something different!

Indeed.

https://breakbrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/5ffd039d1...

That is some solid bullshit and is exactly the opposite of everything known in design theory and studies alike.

Left-aligning text actually helps by providing a fixed start, so your eyes/brain know that they have to start left and a little bit lower. With your way it's exactly the opposite.

Will save further details, doesn't look like it's worth the time.

Yeah. The dude is a Grade-A asshole. His site is complete garbage, yet he insists that it's amazing. I've never seen someone so confidently wrong in every single reply to criticism ever.

Says the guy whose site has a slowly fading in full-screen banner with "Hello! I'm a web designer"

By the way, your link "My Work" under "What I want" is a 404.

I don't think you should be criticising anyone xD

Oh, I didn't realize that. When I move it to my own server that shouldn't be an issue. The peprojects.dev domain is for student work. Thanks for the tip!

Thank you. Reading their original comment & looking at the site: I assumed it was a troll? Seems like they're deliberately doing the opposite of what makes for good UX / reader experience.

* Tiny non-standard font size.

* Their rationale for right text alignment is the exact inverse of why left-aligned text is widely regarded to increase readability. (Also they don't seem to understand what justification means in paragraph formatting).

* Navigation bar falls in the exact area (right edge) where most users' eye gaze rarely falls. (Top left, top right, mid left are the areas where eye-tracking studies show left-to-right language users fixate).

* Weird Geocities-style pinned background with distracting colours.

* Inconsistent use of capitalisation on headers / pages. etc. etc.

> By right-justifying instead, the left edge of the text is made varying, and your eyes have an easier time picking the correct next line.

Is there any research done on this?

> You actually experience physical pain?

No. It slows down my reading and it makes it difficult to understand text.

> Is there any research done on this?

BeeLine [0] claims to be backed by research and employs a similar device. Seems to be a new idea, and I wanted to experiment.

[0] https://www.beelinereader.com/

Interesting. I saw the Beeline Reader before and their method is different in a way that doesn't negatively impact my reading. Their grayscale palette is actually fun and unobtrusive enough that I forget it exists after a while.

Also, their text is left-aligned.

If you're up for more experiments, try a line highlighter that follows a cursor, like so: https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/05/06/hacking-readabi...

I just did the "challenge" at BeeLine and they are not using right-justified text or even mentioning it. What "similar device" are you talking about?

BeeLine founder here! I would guess that parent is referring to the fact that BeeLine assists with visual tracking during line transitions, and having a ragged edge (as opposed to justified) helps with this also. I've not seen people use right-justification as a way to achieve this, but the general consensus is that line transitions are easier when there's a ragged edge instead of justified text.

Oh hey! The funny thing is, I originally contacted BeeLine for a quote but was refused one without an already-existing website. So I resorted to experimenting with right-justification.

Please shoot me an email — happy to make this happen for you.

> You actually experience physical pain?

Not the parent, but I think people will experience a moment of confusion before they adjust. right-align is very unexpected, so even if it's somehow better, it takes time to adjust. That adjustment is undesired and uncomfortable.

I think it may feel similar to a car manufacturer putting the ignition on the left side of the steering column. The driver will briefly jab the key on the right side before understanding that this car is different from every other car the driver has been in. Even if there was extensive research showing that left was better, the first reaction from experienced drivers will be "WTF".

The right align is absolutely horrible and in no way improves readability. The fact that your website is literally the only one I've seen in multiple years using that style should have been a clue.

To every new, better way there is always someone doing it alone first.

Right but someone doing something different alone doesn't typically mean it is a better way. For every new better way there are an infinite number of new worse ways

Sure, but unless you're going to fund a study, this is the way we'll find out: Somebody crazy enough to experiment.

Yes, you're right.

Consider this: you're up against millennia of development in writing and typography. People have tried a lot of different ways of organizing and presenting text. And I mean a lot. Different symbols, different fonts, different page layouts, different text orientations. There was even a long line of symbols spiraling on a disk, getting denser as it approaches the center. There's a good chance somebody tried different ways of aligning long text in a paragraph. And we settled on one. Maybe there was even a good reason for it. It's consistent across cultures too. Justified and centered text aside, left-to-right languages are flushed to the left; right-to-left languages are flushed to the right.

Is it objectively the best way? I don't know.

Writing, fundamentally, is used to communicate your thoughts - to yourself or to others. Publishing your writing on the web (and sharing it here) implies you want others to read it. In order to reach your readers, you want to make it easy for them to parse this text. Over the years, people developed a set of patterns that make text more readable. Some are fundamental. Some are nice to have. Some are so universal they are expected - and noted when they are missing.

Think about why left-to-right languages are left-justified.

It's because when you're writing by hand, you can't possibly know in advance exactly how long the line is going to be, so you have to start at the beginning and write until space runs out.

But now we have computers. We no longer write by hand. It's trivial to have the computer justify text however we wish.

So now we ask the same question again, which way should we justify text now that it is trivial to do it either way? To me, "do it the way it's always been done without question" is a non-answer that leads to exactly no evolution whatsoever.

...and dozens doing something different but actually worse.

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