When I read Jared Spool’s tweet, I smiled and nodded my head.
PSA: Center-justified text is only for wine bottle labels and wedding invitations.
Practically all copy text is easier to read when it’s left justified.
Do your users a favor and avoid center-justified text.
Brought to you by the Left Justified Justice League.
— Jared Spool (@jmspool) November 19, 2017
Why was I smiling?
Two days earlier, I had a 30-minute phone call with a new client about their website redesign.
We discussed their requirements and had a short conversation on why I recommend left-justified text on their website:
- It was easier to read, since the beginning of each line of text starts in the same place
- It was faster to read, because the user knew where each line started
- Centered text is difficult to read, because it forces the user to work harder to find the beginning of the line
Why Centered Text Doesn’t Work for Headings
One of Spool’s Twitter followers said he didn’t agree, he felt centered headings were helpful for users to separate content from headings.
But he was open to learning why centered text was considered bad.
Spool replied with three reasons to avoid using centered heading text:
1/ Any time you adjust the left margin (or right for RtL languages), you put unnecessary burden on the user comprehend the meaning.
If the indentation was consistent, that would be different. But with centered text, the indentation is derived from text length, so it varies.
— Jared Spool (@jmspool) November 19, 2017
2/ That puts burden on the user to try to find it. (It’s particularly bad when the text length of the heading is close to the body width, because then you can’t use position to indicate it’s headingness at all. Multi-line heads are even worse in this case.)
— Jared Spool (@jmspool) November 19, 2017
3/ There are many better ways to indicate a heading is something different than the body text. Mucking about with a variable left margin is not ideal.
— Jared Spool (@jmspool) November 19, 2017
His follow-up tweets gave me added support for the next time a client requested centered text on their website.
Spool also explained in a follow-up tweet that he was referring to languages that read left-to-right.
Summary
Improve readability of your content by using left-justified text instead of centered text.
It’s easier and faster to read text that doesn’t force the reader to search for the beginning of each line.
Do you agree centered text should only be used for wedding invitations and wine labels? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Uh oh. After a recent redesign I now have a multi-section home page with centered text :O Almost everything else on the site (save for the h1 title on each page) is left justified.
I used a large, easy-to-read font (Open Sans) and plenty of whitespace. Everything is centered, so there’s no jumping back and forth between a centered heading and left-justified text. These are fairly small sections of text.
It sounds like you’re saying the uneven left rag of centered text is just as bad as jumping from a centered heading to a left-justified line.
I’m 99% in agreement with both you and Jared. I guess I pointed out all of the above to justify (haha) my design decision.
Hey, Teresa,
An easy-to-read font helps, as does white space. Good to know the majority of your site is left-justified.
My opinion comes from usability testing I’ve conducted: participants had an easier time reading text that was left-justified.