4 ms·
'The ideal line length for text layout is based on the physiology of the human eye [...] At normal reading distance the arc of the visual field is only a few in
by 6d0debc071 13y ago
'The ideal line length for text layout is based on the physiology of the human eye [...] At normal reading distance the arc of the visual field is only a few inches – about the width of a well-designed column of text, or about 12 words per line. Research shows that reading slows and retention rates fall as line length begins to exceed the ideal width, because the reader then needs to use the muscles of the eye and neck to track from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line. If the eye must traverse great distances on the page, the reader is easily lost and must hunt for the beginning of the next line. Quantitative studies show that moderate line lengths significantly increase the legibility of text.'
Web Style Guide – Basic Design Principles for Creating Website
Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton
2nd edition, page 97.
- tomrod 13y agoApparently HN style is broken, as your comment is between 22-28 words per line.
- crazygringo 13y agoOf course it is. HN is known for a lot of good things, but its visual design has certainly never been one of them.
- tomrod 13y agoI for one love the simple design.
- 6d0debc071 13y agoWell, there are degrees of brokenness. There are compromises both with the spec support for columns and with how you'd manage threaded conversation in that sort of layout.
- e12e 13y agoThe real question is why user agents don't set this as default, allowing sites to optionally change it to something else, rather than just presenting paragraph tags as wide as the viewport allows... I don't really think the idea is that the user should have to resize the window. This has been wrong for a long time (even 800 pixels is too wide for most text/standard browser style sheets)...
- yread 13y agoThat's funnny I actually do most of my reading on a screen, with plenty using the full width and I actually find reading articles in newspaper and scientific articles with their tiny columns tedious and annoying. So perhaps these things change...