River (typography)

And here I thought I was just being weirdly picky about this!

…Well, I mean, it’s still probably weirdly picky, but now I’m part of a tradition of being weirdly picky about it!

I love when these patterns are naturally occurring. Didn't know they had a name. Cool.

I didn’t know the English word for that. I like it, it’s kind of poetic.

Just Savage:

A carefully composed text page appears as an orderly series of strips of black separated by horizontal channels of white space. Conversely, in a slovenly setting the tendency is for the page to appear as a grey and muddled pattern of isolated spats, this effect being caused by the over-widely separated words. The normal, easy, left-to-right movement of the eye is slowed simply because of this separation; further, the short letters and serifs are unable to discharge an important function—that of keeping the eye on "the line". The eye also tends to be confused by a feeling of vertical emphasis, that is, an up & down movement, induced by the relative isolation of the words & consequent insistence of the ascending and descending letters. This movement is further emphasized by those "rivers" of white which are the inseparable & ugly accompaniment of all carelessly set text matter.[7]

Me and my homies hate justified alignment

Neat, TIL

This explains so much.

Does anyone else unironically love when this happens??