Position

What position is

Position is how marks sit on the horizontal axis of a Vaquum surface, the second axis any surface declares after vertical rhythm. The parameter takes four values: left-aligned, centred, justified, and right-aligned. Each value declares the alignment of prose, numeric columns, labels, and the body axis. The matrix below records every cell from the typed declaration in @vaquum/face/parameters/position. The grid has 16 cells in total.

Numeric is always right

Numeric content is right-aligned regardless of which position value the surface declares. Tables, ledgers, and figure axis labels read vertically, and right alignment is what makes digits stack column by column without scanning friction. The discipline is independent of the surrounding prose alignment, and applies on every surface the firm produces.

Centred is a failure for body prose

A surface that declares position: centred earns a composition failure. The exception is content inside figures, where centred captions and labels remain permitted. The rule applies to running body prose: centred body text outside a figure is a failure state. The closed set names this failure so the validator can report it before render.

Justified requires hyphenation

Justified prose distributes whitespace evenly across each line, and requires hyphenation to avoid word rivers and ragged inter-word gaps. The CSS property hyphens: auto is mandatory on any element with text-align: justify. The composition validator checks every justified element for that property and emits a fail when it is missing.