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wrapping text at 55-75 characters per line is often recommended in digital typography by UX. research implies that an optimum length exists to maximize reading
by woodrowbarlow 2mo ago
wrapping text at 55-75 characters per line is often recommended in digital typography by UX. research implies that an optimum length exists to maximize reading speed, and although it depends on many factors 55-75 is often parroted as a universal rule.
- hulitu 2mo ago> wrapping text at 55-75 characters per line What happened to 80 ? Ok, 75 is "close enough", but 55 ?
- cluckindan 2mo ago80 is a terminal standard, 55-75 is UX.
- account42 2mo agoIf only UX worried more about user preferences instead of coming up with these dogmatic rules. We can already resize the browser window if we want shorter lines.
- duskdozer 2mo agoI'm sure there's something going back to newspapers on this (though they would of course, fill multiple columns), but I can't help but suspect a lot of these UX studies are just predetermined to justify things like extra space on the margins for ads, "related content" distractions, and such things.
- saghm 2mo agoI've definitely never seen a newspaper that left over half of the page blank.
- duskdozer 2mo agoI didn't say it so clearly but that's what I meant when I said they fill multiple columns. The columns themselves are narrow but there are many of them. I wouldn't mind the narrow widths as much, although this site is excessive, if there was a multi-column layout that filled the window. A lot of the annoyance is needing to scroll.
- moffkalast 2mo agoPersonally, I always found those newspaper columns hard to read, you constantly have to jump back and forth and they break them into so many pieces you have to actively search along the page to see where the damn thing continues.
- antimages 2mo agoIncidentally, the same parrots love eating ants, which is why they're okay with the awful squished up and narrow images the same column width allows for.
- Telaneo 2mo agoAnd here I am, comfortable with and prefering lines at or above 200 characters. Given how many other changes have been made in the name of UX that have been gone compleatly against what those letters stand for, I'll press X to doubt on that one. To be fair, I read fairly quickly, so maybe this is true if you only read 100 words per minute or whatever.
- tredre3 2mo agoShort columns aren't (only) about overall reading speed, it's about comfort. When you're done reading a line your eyes must move back to the start of the next line. With short lines you can still fully see the end of the previous line so it's easy to locate. It's a lot harder to do with long lines.
- Telaneo 2mo agoThis doesn't reflect my own lived experience.
- saghm 2mo agoI don't understand this logic. If I was uncomfortable using the entire width of my monitor, I would have gotten a smaller monitor instead. I find moving my eyes less annoying than moving my fingers to scroll; I often don't even rest my hand on my mouse or keyboard when reading, because I can use my hands for other things at the same time, or even just rest them somewhere else. My point isn't that everyone will agree with me, but that all of these experiences are subjective. The only actually objective signal that the UI developer has is the width of the screen, so that seems like what should be used. Some amount of margin isn't unreasonable, but asserting that my display is "too large to be comfortable" is dogma, not science.