“I just chose words carefully”
This article discusses the aesthetic and technical challenges of typesetting in monospace fonts, specifically focusing on the difficulty of full justification. It highlights creative workarounds, such as manual word selection, used in early digital guides.
Why it matters
It explores the intersection of digital design, typography, and historical internet culture, illustrating how technical constraints drive creative problem-solving.
I don’t think anyone particularly enjoys typesetting in monospace.
Regular text is okay – at least as okay as it can be:
= 2x) and (width >= 700px)" srcset="_media/i-just-chose-words-carefully/1.2096w.avif" type="image/avif"> = 3x) or (width >= 700px)" srcset="_media/i-just-chose-words-carefully/1.1600w.avif" type="image/avif"> Right aligning is also fine, as long as you don’t mind counting spaces, but centering already gets tricky, as you don’t have a half space to make things truly even:
= 2x) and (width >= 700px)" srcset="_media/i-just-chose-words-carefully/2.2096w.avif" type="image/avif"> = 3x) or (width >= 700px)" srcset="_media/i-just-chose-words-carefully/2.1600w.avif" type="image/avif"> And full justification is where things get particularly weird. The spaces are just too large, and cannot be distributed evenly, creating a really unpleasant feeling:
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