Nothing is more amateurish than a website that contains webpages that show a lack of dignity through poor layout. All to often webmasters cater to their own whims and ignore a few simple rules of webpage layout, giving their site an uncoordinated appearance. This makes it difficult your visitors to read and understand what you are trying to say.

When designing a webpage for display on the Internet you must set your ego aside. The information and content you present must be clear to all who visit your website.

Even a personal website should show respect for its visitors by properly justifying the text and using correct alignment to enhance legibility.

Justifying text alignment

Justification refers to the alignment of text using a left or right margin. Text aligned along the left side of the page is called left justified text. Right justified text is aligned with the right margin of the page and of course center justified text is centered on the page or column.

Importance of uniform alignment styles

In this example we see a mish mash of alignment styles. Some of the main page elements are centered, while others are left- justified. This results in a sloppy appearance. Stick with one style unless you have a good reason to do otherwise.

fig.1 - Example of poor alignment

Note: It should be noted that centering everything on a page is for very formal presentations only. It is not often used in website design.

Alignment and organization

Proper text alignment speaks volumes when it comes to designing a great website. There are too many websites on the internet that reflect a lack of knowledge of proper page layout on the part of the webmaster. A webpage that is not properly justified will fail to impress visitors and make it more difficult for them to scan your page properly.

A well planned and organized webpage is easy to read. If you are selling a product you want your message to be easily understood and not be confusing to your customers. Organization is the key to understanding and proper organization of your webpages will fail if they are not correctly justified.