- From: Liam Quin via GitHub <sysbot+gh@w3.org>
- Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2016 22:02:05 +0000
- To: public-css-archive@w3.org
On Sat, 2016-11-19 at 12:26 -0800, rchrdnsh wrote: > Does anybody have a good source on the origin and reasoning behind > using the word 'justify' in typography and typesetting? It's been in use for a long time -- e.g. it's in my 1736 copy of Bailey's dictionary, as well as Jacobi's 1888 dictionary of printing terms [1], where he describes justifying a stick, or composing-stick. I'm not sure what the origin was (possibly via the Latin, to make just, or to make even, since justification makes the edges of the text even) but I don't think it would be productive for CSS to try and change it, even if it were not already in widespread use in CSS. You might as well ask why a typeface implementation is called a font and not (as it once was) a fount, or (as I think it never was) a murder mystery, despite containing some shady characters. Liam [1] http://words.fromoldbooks.org/Jacobi-PrintersVocabulary/j/justifyin g-a-stick.html -- Liam R. E. Quin <liam@w3.org> The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) -- GitHub Notification of comment by liamquin Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/595#issuecomment-261742625 using your GitHub account
Received on Saturday, 19 November 2016 22:02:15 UTC