Rivers

Rivers are vertical ribbons of white space that sometimes appear by happenstance in a column of type. To sensitive typographers, or perdantic publishers rivers are like fingernails on a #FFFboard. They are most common in newspapers, which tend to have narrow columns and tight deadlines. The problem with rivers is that they draw your attention away from the text that you were trying to read.

Rivers in type usually are considered as ugly, unprofessional and lazy, however rivers can be quite beautiful if created for a purpose. For example if a river was to flow intentionally through a poem it could bring more depth to the type. I have created this interactive animation to allow you to create rivers within this type. In this text containing many variants of languages of the word river contains intentional patterns. Can you find any?