- Law 21: Avoid Bad Line Breaks.
A line break is the place in a paragraph where text
breaks off at the end of one line and then continues
again on the next line of the paragraph.
And there are Two Different Types of Bad Line Breaks.
Bad Visual Breaks and Bad Contextual Breaks.
Bad Visual Breaks are line breaks that
Visually Disrupt the Flow of Your Text.
Here's an example of a small chunk of text that has some
Bad Visual Breaks and here's an example of the same text,
but now the breaks have been fixed and our paragraph
looks a lot neater and a lot cleaner.
If you are using flush left text, like we are here in
our examples, you want to make sure and pay attention
to the right edge of your text block.
This first block of text here is an example of what
is called a Bad Rag, or a Bad Ragged Edge.
And you can see over here on this right side
the jagged dynamic shape that's being created
in the white space of this right margin.
This is pretty Distracting and should be avoided.
Looking at the second sample block of text,
notice how the Bad Rag has been fixed.
And we did this by making the entire text block
just a little bit narrower.
This one small adjustment made a huge positive difference
in the way that this text looks on the page.
Now the right edge is much less jagged and as a result
the white space over here is a lot less distracting.
This isn't an issue that's just limited to flush left text.
You can also end up with Bad Breaks in Flush Right Text
and also with Centered Text.
So watch out for Bad Visual Line Breaks.
They Make your Documents Look Less Professional,
and they're Distracting to Readers.
Now let's talk about Bad Contextual Breaks.
Here's an example of a Bad Contextual Break in a headline
and here's the same headline, but this time
that break has been fixed.
In the first block of text, notice how the Line Break
is splitting up words that really belong together
in the same phrase and should appear on the same line.
If you're reading this headline, this Bad Break might
cause you to go back and reread it,
just to make sure you understood its meaning.
Any time that your layout forces readers
to go back and reread something,
this is a red flag that improvements need to be made.
Now when the break is fixed reading the text
is so much easier and that's because we've minimized
that distraction of the Bad Contextual Break.
You also want to watch your Line Breaks
when you're dealing with URLs and Email Addresses.
It's really important that these special strings of text
appear on the same line with no breaks, whenever possible.
And this can be a little tricky because URLs
and Email Addresses tend to get long, some of them,
but it's important because we want to make these special
strings of text as readable and as useful as possible.
So how can you fix bad line breaks?
Editing or rewriting the text is sometimes the best
and the easiest way to fix these issues.
If you can add, delete, or maybe modify a few words
sometimes you can take care of the bad break problem.
You may not always be able to edit the text in the document
you're working on and if that's not an option,
there are still a couple other ways
that you can correct bad breaks.
You can Change the Width of the Text Block,
make it a little bit wider, or a little bit narrower.
You can also Change the Size of the Text.
Often a very small, tiny change will make
enough of a difference to fix the issues
that you're having with bad breaks.
Let's summarize, Watch for Bad Line Breaks
in Small Chunks of Text.
Fixing these Bad Line Breaks will
Make Your Text Easier to Read,
and Makes Your Documents Look More Professional.
That's Law 21: Avoid Bad Line Breaks.