Tip #2 -- Text Alignment on Your Website

Thanks for coming to read the Black Business Bureau’s second tip on website design and development. This time we’ll briefly address text alignment with websites, because even something as simple as word choice and text alignment makes huge differences in determining site traffic (the amount of visitors to your site) and returning visitors to your site.

1) Aligned Left:
Aligning your text to the left is usually common for most websites. There isn’t a special feature or reason to align your page content to the left other than simple appeal to your visitors.

This is a text aligned to the left

2) Aligned Right:
Right alignments are usually used for pictures. It is very rare to align your words to the right of your page, simply because people read from left to right. The only time a right alignment of text is used is for placing copyright information or mentioning your name to a particular service or product.

This is a text aligned to the right

3) Centered:
Centered alignments are common for attention getters. When a text is centered it is usually a title or a special announcement that you (the website developer) want your visitors to see.

For Example:
Take a look at the top of this page; notice the Black Business Bureau Website Development title as well as the topic of discussion (Tip 2 – Text Alignment)

This centered text is used to capture your attention…
Did it capture your attentions?

4) Justified:
Justified Alignments are used almost as frequent as a left aligned text. Justified aligned text gives a professional image to your website. BE CAREFUL, depending on the length of your text, justified text alignments can cause your words to be very far apart, which gives an amateur or unprofessional look to your site. In many occassions, justified text alignment looks very similar to left alignment.

For Example:

This text is justified; it almost looks like a left aligned text. The difference is that the words are spaced evenly whereas a left aligned text would clutter the words to the right side of the screen.

Now since we spoke about alignment, lets discuss actual fonts. With websites different browsers have different settings. Your website which may look great in web browsers like Firefox may look horrible in web browsers like Internet Explorer. For readable text in websites, you should stick with basic fonts such as:

· Times New Roman

· Arial

· Verdana

· Trebuchet MS

· Tahoma

· Microsoft Sans Serif

Fancy fonts should be used for word processors and other document processing software but not for websites. Here are a few examples of faulty text:

Times New Roman – Black Business Bureau

Algerian – Black Business Bureau

Edwardian Script ITC– Black Business Bureau

Arial – Black Business Bureau

Book Antiqua– Black Business Bureau

Verdana – Black Business Bureau

Trebuchet MS – Black Business Bureau

Tahoma – Black Business Bureau

Bookman Old Style – Black Business Bureau

You can experiment with several different fonts and how they will look on your website. To begin testing and using fonts and formatting your design, please download a free website editor, or purchase one with the Black Business Bureau.

FREE Website Editors Buy Dreamweaver 8

Tip 3 - Website Color Schemes


This information was proudly presented by

The Black Business Bureau's website development staff