https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&feedformat=atom&user=Andy+S 2026-04-04T16:01:34Z User contributions MediaWiki 1.30.0 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1676:_Full-Width_Justification&diff=119247 2016-05-04T05:08:21Z

<p>Andy S: </p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 1676<br /> | date = May 4, 2016<br /> | title = Full-Width Justification<br /> | image = full_width_justification.png<br /> | titletext = Gonna start bugging the Unicode consortium to add snake segment characters that can be combined into an arbitrary-length non-breaking snake.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> {{incomplete|hasty &amp; impatient placeholder}}<br /> The comic refers to an irritating problem in laying out text in narrow spaces, as in newspaper columns or some web pages: the problem of [[:w:justification|justification]]. Sometimes, as before a long word like &quot;[[:wikt:deindustrialization|deindustrialization]],&quot; there's no good way to make the typography work. The comic shows several solutions to this problem, some realistic and others less so, but each unsatisfying. &quot;Giving up&quot; is ugly; hyphenating is visually confusing (&quot;deindus-&quot; looks like an independent, unfamiliar word, pronounced &quot;deign-duss&quot;); stretching is unnatural, probably hard to code or render, and unfamiliar; adding &quot;filler&quot; words, a radical solution, makes the writing worse; and adding a meaningless snake image, just long enough to fill the extra space, is a novel (and bizarre) solution advocated in the title-text.<br /> <br /> Note that in Arabic, it is common to stretch the lines connecting letters as a relatively elegant and satisfying resolution to this problem. This trick is called &quot;[[:w:kashida|kashida]]&quot; (كشيدة) and is explained and illustrated [http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/creative-arabic-calligraphy-kashida-tajim-and-tashkil--cms-23240 here].<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> {{incomplete transcript}}<br /> <br /> ==Trivia==<br /> The full text (with alternate changes) reads:<br /> <br /> ''...their famous paper on the relationship between [crap like]/[ 🐍 ] deindustrialization and the growth of ecological...''<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}</div>

Andy S