River

Also called river of white

Type
Composition
2D

A channel of white running down or diagonally through a text block where word spaces on consecutive lines happen to align. A justified-setting disease: stretching word spaces to fill the measure widens every space at once, and wide spaces find each other. Squinting at the block, or turning it upside down, reveals them.

Two justified paragraphs at one measure. In the first, set without hyphenation, the word spaces are stretched wide and three of them fall into line down the left of the block; a dashed accent rule traces the chain. The measure was chosen by looking for a setting that has a river in it, and the chain itself is found in the laid-out text rather than drawn — the caption says so. The second, hyphenated, keeps its spaces near their natural width and no chain is found, so nothing is traced.

Not to be confused with

RagThe uneven edge of unjustified text. A good rag is worked, not accepted: it varies line to line without falling into a wedge, a staircase, or an accidental shape, and it never leaves a one-word line or breaks a name across lines. The reward for leaving it ragged is even word spacing throughout.

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