Re: Justified versus ragged right? (take III)

["Michael West" <mbwest -at- bigpond -dot- com>]

> Gutenberg used RJ text, but from what I can see in on-line pictures of
> his books, he hyphenated with abandon. Also, he put punctuation that
> fell at line's end (including hyphens) to the right of the column edge.
> 
> So RR is battling against an ancient tradition, probably derived from
> styles established by scribes.

The opposite is true. Hand-lettered manuscripts of Gutenberg's time had
uneven line lengths.

Gutenberg's contraption required a wooden frame that held the rows of type
in place; this in turn required the rows to be of equal length.

--
Mike West

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