Let’s say you like to write long blog
posts, or your website has a lot of
text to absorb. Do you know the
best line length for your readers?
Are shorter lines like the ones above, 35 characters long,
easier on your readers’ eyes? Or will they have better reading
comprehension for lines a little longer, like these which are
55 characters long? What about the reading speed? Maybe
the lines of 75 characters, like these, are easier on the eyes and more enjoyable
for readers. A study was done by A. Dawn Shaikh called The Effects of Line Length
on Reading Online News. Twenty college students read news articles of varying
character lengths from a computer monitor. The articles were approximately 375
words. Tests were then administered to determine the effect of four different line on reading speed,
reading comprehension, and overall user satisfaction. The results were as follows: Neither reading
comprehension nor user satisfaction were significantly different for the four different line lengths.
But there was a clear winner for reading speed. Line lengths of 95 characters, which is the length of
the lines you are reading now, were read faster than all the others. Since newspaper readership has
steadily declined, more people are getting their news and other information online. This study shows
that your blog posts and website text will be read faster if you use a 95 character line length. We
wonder how many characters Greg at Bloodhound blog uses? It really doesn’t matter because we’d
read him even if his lines were 20 characters long, though we’d properly have a sore index finger from
all the scrolling.
Source: Usability News {h/t MicroPersuasion}
Related posts:
How To Improve Your Website: Alertbox Web usabilty guru explains it all
10 Tips to Better Writing
Why 81% Don’t Read Newsletters People more often just scan copy
And text with funky line breaks
are downright painful to read
I write for a small community newspaper. We were taught to not use long paragraphs or use have long inches of dense text with not graphics or white space. I am seeing some blog posts are there that pack in hundreds of words in one long paragraph of small print. I think people have short attention spams so I keep mine short and like you I include a grpahic.
Long, dense text and no sense about throwing in illustrations. That boy ain’t right in the head!
(Thank you. You’re very sweet.)
Ha you caught that Broker in LA. I painstakingly made the line lengths to illustrate the test line lengths in the draft only to discover on publish it did not fit. Drat!
Teresa have you read any Alertbox? More tips on writing for the web– bullets, highlighting…
Greg, everyone knows a dog is a man’s best friend :).
-jf
Not only does it not publish long lines, but the RSS feed gets even funkier. Stick with 55 no matter what they say - after all, 55 saves lives and gas too.
Thanks fat bear. Experience is the best teacher.
Interesting. Thanks for this reminder. I guess different audiences might prefer different line widths, though - I personally liked the narrowest lines.
Easton, have you read any Alertbox? The insights on writing for the web are quite revealing.
jf…thanks for tips, especially Alertbox. Although, I personally don’t find their site very visually appealing. I get more good tips from http://www.stylegala.com/ and http://www.alistapart.com/.
Haven’t read AlertBox yet - I’ll check it out, thanks!