I have a design book somewhere I believed mentioned a technique for justifying type that was called something like half justification. This is from at least 20 years ago and I’ve never been able to find the reference again. As I remember the piece was from England. The idea was that if the length of the text was within some predetermined distance of the maximum possible width the line would be justified. If it fell short of that it would remain ragged right.

The first example below is 12 point Rialto on a 20 pica measure set flush left / ragged right.

Below is the same text, but if the text length was 19 picas or more the line was force justified.

I like the way that looks and was thinking about trying it on an upcoming project.

Especially from British readers of this post, does anyone know what this is called or if it is even something compositors actually did? Have an example?

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