[Sigia-l] width limits for a body of text

[George Olsen]

Joy Ray said:
> I'm not sure where I heard this, but I once heard that the optimum line
> length was about the distance between a person's eyes (around five
> inches).

Actually, it's pretty difficult to reduce things down to a simplistic
formula like that.

Readability is based on an interplay among type size, line length, leading
(line-height in CSS) and type face (the shape of the letterforms can have
a significant affect on things, I won't bore you with the details). As
well as other factors, like the contrast between type and background,
specific color used, etc.

Jon Hanna wrote:
> The optimal line length is one the reader can adjust to suit themselves.

Despite these sentiments, there's decades of research about what's more
legible and what's not.

I agree users _should_ be able to override the designers choice _if they
want/need to_. But most people don't understand the principles of
typography, so it's unrealistic to expect them to do things like resizing
their browser window to make column widths easier to read.

Designers have been aiding readers of print with these sorts of
behind-the-scenes adjustments for centuries, why shouldn't they do the
same on-screen?