I wear corrective lenses largely for astigmatism. I had the lowest spherical correction until this year (now one eye moved up a click) and each eye has a different angle of cylindrical correction. I get the long-x shaped smears on street lights at night, but dramatically improved with correction. (It almost entirely goes away and looks like a slightly spiky, mostly uniform glow.)

The same blur is present for me on text on a white background...it just wasn't as apparent to me as, say, blue glowing signs at night or a microwave clock. But wearing glasses, the text is noticeably crisper and less "bold" looking. Which results in not having eye strain. The halation is still there, but it's just less obvious what's going on.

I just assumed everyone saw the same thing at night for a long time...and would never have even guessed something was off about regular black-on-white text without having an optometrist clue me in.

The name for this is ‘astigmatic halation’.