Posted October 28, 2015
I just added Shorter line length in forum posts to the community wishlist. But I thought I might as well hear other folks take on this as well, hence this post. My wish goes like this:
About 65 characters is widely considered the ideal length for a line of text. On this forum, the lines are about 140 characters long. This makes them harder to read.
Googling ‘optimal line length’ gives you lots of info on this. But basically, our subconscious gets a boost each time our eyes jumps to a new line. With extremely long line length, the reader runs out of steam before reaching the end of the line. Try picking up a book - any book you like, doesn’t matter - and count the number of characters in a random line. It’s will be something close to 65 characters. Because, if you break this rule, whatever you publish won’t be read.
The current line length discourages visitors from actually reading the longer posts, and makes them skim it instead.
How about making the line length shorter and thus, easier to read?
About 65 characters is widely considered the ideal length for a line of text. On this forum, the lines are about 140 characters long. This makes them harder to read.
Googling ‘optimal line length’ gives you lots of info on this. But basically, our subconscious gets a boost each time our eyes jumps to a new line. With extremely long line length, the reader runs out of steam before reaching the end of the line. Try picking up a book - any book you like, doesn’t matter - and count the number of characters in a random line. It’s will be something close to 65 characters. Because, if you break this rule, whatever you publish won’t be read.
The current line length discourages visitors from actually reading the longer posts, and makes them skim it instead.
How about making the line length shorter and thus, easier to read?