Spitfire - Return to Flight by Brendon Deere - A Review

[Jukka Juutinen]

I have glasses as well, and I read several hours per day. And everytime I encounter ragged-right text, reading speed drops by at least 80%. Often by 100% and I skip the book totally. Hyphenation present no problem to me at all. And if you care to check, ragged right is a very present phenomenon. Right before my eyes I have a Finnish aviation periodical from 1933: all text except short caption is fully justified. I also have a book on aero engines from 1918, again fully justified throughout. I haven´t seen a single pre-1990s book with ragged right text. Considering that "pre-ragged" time lasted several hundred years, I am inclined to take that as a proof that fully justidied is the best way to go. Ragged-right simply indicates a designer lacking in proper skills. Or he is severely stoned.

I have compared the two extensively, and everytime the ragged-right loses miserably.

I haven´t met a single person who reads a lot of texts and is at least 30 yrs old to prefer ragged-right.

And are these "educational psychologists" of the same league as those doctors who consider alcoholism an illness when it is actually a weakness of character? BTW, I am a teetotaller.

One more thing: shouldn´t books be designed with literate people in mind, not semiliterate?