Readability/Usability/Quality 4-00 (December 2000) by Chris Curwen The Original Article:RU22: Facilitate Reading

For more than twenty years, I have been teaching participants in my Technical Writing courses, and in my various seminars, not to hyphenate words unnecessarily as it makes reading more difficult, particularly for people who are not English speaking. At the same time, I have been teaching them not to justify their text.

So, it was with some interest that I read the comments on hyphenation presented by Amo Fuchs, Amy Bryant, and Udit Chaudhuri in TC-FORUM 03/2000. However, like many things, the subject of hyphenation cannot be dealt with in isolation. Without a complete understanding of the process that gave rise to the use of hyphenation, any discussion tends to be purely subjective. So, any discussion must also include the subject of justification, as this is the process that caused the unnecessary use of hyphens in the first place.

 

To Justify or not, that is the real question!

Justification is a process that was required by the original Gutenberg printing process. In this process, more commonly known as Letterpress printing, separate characters were mounted into a frame, called a "forme", from which the pages were printed. To ensure that the characters did not fall out of the frame during printing, each of the lines of type had to be exactly the same length. And, to achieve this, the compositors varied the word spacing and hyphenated words.

Although varying word spacing and hyphenating words made reading more difficult, there was no choice. The printing process that was used had that limitation.

However, as long ago as 1920, the Lithographic printing process largely replaced the Letterpress process. And it is the Lithographic process that we use today. Because there are no separate characters in the Lithographic process, there is no need to make each line of type exactly the same length. As a result, there is no need to vary word spacing, or to hyphenate words unnecessarily.

So, my advice to all Technical Writers and Authors is to make sure that your text reflects a modern image of you, and the company or organisation you work for. Show your readers that you have indeed progressed beyond the 1920s and the limitations of the Letterpress process. To do that, switch off both justification and hyphenation. That way, each line of type will contain complete words, not fragmented text. And you will not have the "... many fjords ..." that Amo Fuchs seemed to fear.

 

What about TC-Forum?

My congratulations go to Hans Springer and his colleagues on the standard they have set in the production of TC-Forum. Their removal of unnecessary hyphens in TC-Forum 03/2000, together with unjustified text, has shown a dramatic improvement over previous issues. That is the way to go. Please do not go backwards by looking for some ridiculously expensive, and probably useless, hyphenation program.  

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