On my 5:4 aspect monitor, 80 characters is just wide enough so that I can fit two editor columns side by side at a comfortable font size without having to scrol

On my 5:4 aspect monitor, 80 characters is just wide enough so that I can fit two editor columns side by side at a comfortable font size without having to scroll horizontally. I suspect that if I had a widescreen monitor, I could shrink the font size slightly and see three columns of 80 characters each. But that would just be extravagant. (Of course I have a second monitor, but that usually has documentation and a terminal and IRC on it.)