Typographic alignment

In typesetting and page layout, alignment or range is the setting of text flow or image placement relative to a page, column (measure), table cell, or tab. The type alignment setting is sometimes referred to as text alignment, text justification, or type justification. The edge of a page or column is known as a margin, and a gap between columns is known as a gutter.

There are four basic typographic alignments:

Note that alignment does not change the direction in which text is read; however text direction may determine the most commonly used alignment for that script.

In English and most European languages where words are read left-to-right, text is usually aligned "flush left", meaning that the text of a paragraph is aligned on the left-hand side with the right-hand side ragged. This is the default style of text alignment on the World Wide Web for left-to-right text. Quotations are often indented.

Flush left might also be used in very narrow columns, where full justification would produce too much whitespace between characters or words on some lines.

In other languages that read text right-to-left, such as Arabic and Hebrew, text is commonly aligned "flush right". Additionally, flush-right alignment is used to set off special text in English, such as attributions to authors of quotes printed in books and magazines, or text associated with an image to its right. Flush right is often used when formatting tables of data.

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