Wreckers

Quick poll! Even or uneven margin? I dunno if that means the same in english as in danish, so in short, should I opt for the "pretty", but "harder" to read even margin, where both margins are as straight as me, or uneven where only left margin is straight, while the other is... Golgolath.

Quick response:

My preference is nearly always for even alignment (the phrase you want is 'justified') depending on paper size.


Reason I say that is - Justify the body of text then any block of quoted material is done ragged right aligned - helps to lift quote blocks away from the text body. However if you are inserted graphics throughout the text then watch for badly kerned lines either sides of the graphic.

Yes justified is slightly 'harder' to read, depending on what paper size you are using. If you are using say an A5 format, then no questions but justify. If you are doing A4 then go for ragged right or consider 2-3 columns.

Oh and when you do do the formatting, make sure you have checked for widows and orphans.

For an academic text (and one that I have some first hand knowledge of now I'd avoid justification because it does impact readability.

Given that you're using specified spacing to improve readability, it seems like a waste to reduce that on justification of the margins.

There are a lot of diagrams and charts (which should probably not be "centered" thinking about it, but rather left justified with the margin indented to the correct point for the image).

Normally I prefer justified (particularly for business correspondence) but for me, at least, it was a godsend to have the spacing as you did because it's not exactly light reading (particularly as I last studied physics in highschool 20 years ago!

I decided not to "justify" it. Gf was very opposed to "justifying" it every time she saw a print of it, immediately saying it was annoying just to look at. Seeing as my main justification for justifying was that it looked pretty, it seemed inappropriate, as Creac wrote. I would definately not do this for a smaller paper printed on A5 though (this is A4), agree with Miruwin that justifying would be all around better there.

And wtf is widows and orphans? :p Keep seeing the phrase, but never what they are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_%28typesetting%29

Meh, I have a ton of those. I would be at it still, if I had to fix it all. It's not pretty, but the figure text alone (and the size of the figures) means that it's damn near impossible. Some figures would have to be 2-3-4 pages removed from their reference, if I had to ensure full page coverage. Very annoying, very time-consuming.

umm if this is for your thesis doesn't the school have a prescribed format? i would recomend using that format.

Thyrx wrote:umm if this is for your thesis doesn't the school have a prescribed format? i would recomend using that format.

I wish. Sadly, they do not. So I'm left to trial-and-error and I only have one try :p

Hoping they like it.

The book binding sucks though... pretty, but not easy to just flip open a page, lean back and start reading... and chance of pages falling out, if they're violent with it :/

But... cest le vie.

Oh and the content is "Meh" at best But I'm happy about it.

Funny story, btw. Orphans are called "Bastards" in danish

Vexo wrote:

Funny story, btw. Orphans are called "Bastards" in danish Smile

Heh, how ironic. That's what we call aussies over here

Gim and co...