Dear BLOOM Developer,
First of all, thank you for continually improving BLOOM. I would like to suggest adding a new feature to the text alignment options: “Justify”. Currently, BLOOM only has “Left”, “Center”, and “Right” buttons, but not “Justify”. I believe that books would look nicer if the text were justified. This sentiment was also echoed by some participants in my recent BLOOM workshop.
Thank you so much in advance for your assistance.
Blessings,
Joemin Maratin
Thanks for that Joemin. We’ve added this to our plan for Bloom 5.7.
Dear John,
Wow. That sounds great!
Thank you so much for informing me of this.
Joemin Maratin
I am somewhat surprised that there have been requests to include a justified text alignment feature for BLOOM, unless it is just to give all the options out there. Since first beginning to work in literacy with minority groups I learned that flush left text was advised over justification, especially for early readers. One website gives this explanation:
“Where possible, ensure text is left-aligned (meaning the right edge is uneven) rather than justified (where both left and right edges are uniform). If text is left-aligned, the letter and word spacing are optimal for readability. However, if text is justified, uneven spacing between letters and words can significantly reduce readability, especially for some people with dyslexia, who can find they ‘slip’ up and down in the ‘rivers of white space’ that appear in justified text.” (From https://www.open.edu/openlearn/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=135479§ion=3.1)
Right, that’s why we haven’t had the feature previously. It will be up to book creators to use it appropriately.