: The lesser of two evils: Choice between a too long line and a too short line? If I cannot avoid having a line that deviates in length from other lines in a document: should I choose a slightly
If I cannot avoid having a line that deviates in length from other lines in a document:
should I choose a slightly shorter line or a slightly longer line?
In this example, the first line of footnote 10 is slightly too long in the first, and slightly too short in the second image.
This problem may occur when writing documents in LaTeX, even after applying the usual measures (e.g. emergencystretch, sloppy).
In LaTeX, you will receive an “underfull hbox” or “overfull hbox” warning if this happens.
There may be ways to avoid the problem, but that is not the point and this question is not about LaTeX, it is about typography.
It is not about this particular example either, which is why I added the tag design-principles.
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Since you admit that this is not about LaTeX, and you wish to have this answer in typographic measurement: there is a slight advantage for a line of text that does NOT end short.
Lines that end short are called "widows" (especially if the line of text is only one or two short words). Reading a document with many widows will take slightly longer to read compared to a document with no widows. The reason is that your eyeball takes extra time to move down, move left, move right, etc etc. Your eyes are like robots: they require a sequence of movements. As a designer, you should minimize the required movement of your reader to complete a task.
There are a more typography tricks that can hinder readability (rags and orphans). If you wish to learn more, here is a good article that introduces these terms:
www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-2/text-typography/rags-widows-orphans
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