{
  "id": 4521556,
  "title": "\"I just chose words carefully.\"",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/30/i-just-chose-words-carefully",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-08-30T22:49:48.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Hacker News",
    "slug": "hacker-news",
    "url": "https://unsung.aresluna.org/i-just-chose-words-carefully/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Monospace text typesetting is often not a favorite task. Regular text is acceptable, right alignment is tolerable if one can manage counting spaces, even centering presents challenges due to the lack of half spaces for perfect alignment. Full justification takes things to an extreme, with overly large spaces that cannot be evenly distributed, leading to an uncomfortable feeling. The standard solution in typesetting is hyphenation, but in monospace, hyphenation is also unpleasant as the hyphens draw too much attention and disrupt copy and paste.\n\nThis is why full justification is rarely seen in text files. However, there is an alternative approach. Rewriting the text to carefully select only words that precisely match the line length can avoid double spaces altogether. This is precisely what rs1n did in the late 1990s for his guide to Super Metroid. The resulting text features 17,000 words with the right margin perfectly ending on a letter, and there are no instances of twin spaces. The author lightly mentions in the FAQ that no program was used to justify the text; it was all done by the author choosing words carefully so that everything lined up on the right-hand side. The author shares this mostly as a curiosity, noting that some rewrites for physical books are common to avoid widows and orphans, but such meticulous editing is less common in onscreen writing.\n\nDespite the effort required, many can relate to dedicating hours to fine-tuning a button UI string or a tooltip to fit within a specific width in a densely packed interface.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "Hacker News Best",
        "title": "“I just chose words carefully”",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/30/i-just-chose-words-carefully-4544938",
        "published": "2026-08-30T22:49:48.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}