raggedright

Raggedright is a typographic term describing left-aligned text whose right edge is not flush with the right margin. In TeX and LaTeX, raggedright refers to a declaration or environment that disables full justification for the text within its scope, resulting in lines that are flush left with a ragged right edge. This is common in documents where long lines would otherwise produce excessive interword spacing or large rivers of white space.

Usage: In LaTeX you can write \begin{raggedright} ... \end{raggedright}, or use the declaration \raggedright inside a group or environment. It is also frequently used in minipages, captions, or narrow columns, where full justification would harm readability.

Behavior: The typesetting system does not stretch spaces to reach the margin; instead it leaves the right margin irregular and may adjust line breaks and hyphenation to improve appearance. Some implementations adjust interword spacing to maintain readability. The result is a more casual or editorial appearance, and in some contexts it mirrors the look of hand-set text.

Relation to other alignments: Raggedright contrasts with fully justified text, which aligns both margins, and with raggedleft, which aligns text to the right margin and leaves the left ragged. In many document styles, raggedright is used for short passages, captions, poetry-like lines, or sections where even left marginal alignment is preferred.

Note: The exact behavior depends on the engine and packages; packages like microtype may tweak spacing even when raggedright is in effect.