text-justify defines where space is added in justified text
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This post is part of my Today I learned series in which I share all my learnings regarding web development.
Today I came across the CSS property text-justify, which I haven't heard of before. It turns out that this CSS property controls how user agents deal with text justification. There are at least two ways browsers justify the text when text-align: justify is set:
- add spacing between words
- add spacing between every character
text-justify controls the spacing for an element's text justification. The default value for text-justify is auto, which leads user agents to pick the best way depending on performance, quality, and set language.
Then there are inter-word and inter-character, which lead to the spacing between words or characters. What's interesting is that there is also a none value which disables text justification completely even when text-align: justify; is set. 😲
You can read more about text-justify on MDN. And that's it for today – quick and easy. 🙈
Edited: Sven Wolfermann pointed out that you have to be careful when using text-justify because the browser support is not that great these days.
Edited: Also, if you're using text justification you have to be aware that a nice formated text could harm readability.