Why LaTeX looks always the same

 

Critics and fans of the LaTeX document system have argued that a latex formatted document looks always the same. The idea is this increases the quality and makes academic papers easier to read What is missing in the debate is a reason which element of a latex document produces the typical layout. It is not the selected font and it is not the table of content. But what latex formatted papers have in common is the justified paragraphes.

Justification means that the right edge of a paragraph forms a straight line. This principle was used in western typography since 400 years. It is the only allowed style for academic authoritative documents. The LaTeX community has adapted to this style.

The interesting situation that from a typographic perspective there are many arguments against justified text available. But none of the argument is valid for the latex community. Bascialy spoken the idea is that justified paragraphs is the most important rule and can't be changed.

The interesting situation is that from a technical perspective it is possible to create with latex a left-justified text too The ragged2d package was created for this purpose.. But the resulting pdf paper looks different from the usual latex document. It has a very unique style and some design experts will say that it it looks better than justified text.

Basically spoken, latex means basically that the paragraph is justified. The combination of word wrapping, hyphenation and microtype package can do this very well. The question is if it makes sense to format documents this way. From a historical perspective justified text is equal to professional formatted text. Only very complicated typesetting systems are able to do. Programming an algorithm like the microtype package is not a trivial case. The idea is that this effort results into a high quality layout. That means after switching on the justified option the text will become a better one?