What it means
Justification is the setting of text so that every full line is exactly the same length, giving the text block straight edges on both sides. The line lengths are equalised by stretching or shrinking the word spaces — and, in careful work, by hair-thin adjustments to letter spacing and glyph widths. Almost all printed books are justified; it is the look readers associate with a book rather than a document.
The alternative is ragged right (flush left), where word spaces stay uniform and the right edge varies. Ragged setting is standard for poetry, common in narrow columns and children's books, and easier to do well.
Justified text lives or dies by hyphenation: without the option to break words, a narrow measure produces lines with gaping spaces that connect into visible rivers of white running down the page. That is why typesetting engines treat justification and hyphenation as one problem — TeX famously optimises a whole paragraph at once.
In Bindery
Bindery typesets in LaTeX, whose paragraph builder chooses justification and hyphenation together across the whole paragraph — the Knuth–Plass line-breaking algorithm.
Make the book, not the checklist
Describe a book or upload a manuscript. Bindery writes with you, typesets in LaTeX, sizes the spine from the real page count and produces printer-validated files — the watermarked proof is always free.
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