Board Thread:Darwin/@comment-2118812-20130822134212/@comment-3508190-20130823064347

My screen width is 1920 pixels. That means the text width is around 200 characters. That's very difficult to read. It becomes difficult for the eyes to maintain the precise horizontal movement. And it becomes even more difficult to find the beginning of the next line. Frequently the reader will get lost in the text. Reading efficiciency declines and so will the number of readers who make it to the last line. That's actually old news. There has been plenty of discussion and research about this topic. The Elements of Typographic Style specifically recommends 45 to 75 characters per line for block text. Granted, those recommendations were made with print in mind, but apart from wikipedia - which is a terrible example in this regard - I can't think of a single successful web site that does away with that recommendation completely. Unlimited character length is a bad idea.