"I was ignorant of this unit of measure so the author is an asshole" is spectacularly rude. What is your solution to specifying that a column should contain on

"I was ignorant of this unit of measure so the author is an asshole" is spectacularly rude. What is your solution to specifying that a column should contain on average n characters in CSS? With your reaction, I'm sure you must have a solution than is simpler than just using the basic unit measure that CSS provides? Because the author isn't being "clever" or trying to be "cool" by just using the basic API provided.