![]() Yu-Chi Tai, James Sheedy and John Hayes conducted a study where the inter-character spacing of Verdana 10-point font was condensed and expanded in a step-wise manner from default. If line lengths are too long, the return sweeps to the beginning of the next line are difficult. A medium line length of 55 characters per line was rated as easiest to read, but was not read the fastest.Ī possible reason could be that if the lines are too short, readers cannot make use of much information in each fixation. The readers’ perceptions of ease of reading however was contradictory to the results. The results showed that the number of characters per line affects reading rate with the longest line read faster than the shortest line tested. Using more recent display technology, Dyson and Kipping (1998) looked at line length by keeping type size constant and varying the number of characters per line. In a more recent study by UX experts Martin Pielot, Luz Rello and Mari-Carmen Marcos, the conclusion was that an 18 point font size provides web readers with the best readability and comprehension for body copy. Fonts that were read faster were generally read less accurately. The study found 10 point font size were read more slowly than the 12 point size. Lucian Bernhard compared 10, 12 and 14 point sizes of eight type faces and measured the ‘reading efficiency’ (reading time / accuracy). They also cause problems with the way justified columns appear. Narrower lines would cause the reader to have to switch from line to line unnecessarily often. This allows the eye 6 to 12 quick stops on each line. 55–60 characters (including spaces) per line could be considered an appropriate line length. Reading takes place in small leaps of 5–10 characters at a time. ![]() The relationship between physical line length, number of characters per line and type size. The number of characters per line can be varied by changing type size, but keeping the same physical length, e.g. It can also refer to the number of characters in a line. Line length can be measured by the physical length of the line (e.g. Serif or Sans Serif Typefaces), indented paragraphs, character density, letter spacing, type size (because of its relation to line length) and many others. Typographic variables have been studied abundantly throughout the years. Other variables, such as columns, window size, interlinear spacing, interaction between characters per line and eye movement, scrolling movements, reading patterns and format familiarity are equally important. This is in contrast with the amount of research done on line length. It’s true, text layout hasn’t been the subject of many studies to date. Dyson’s paper, called “How physical text layout affects reading from screen”, as a guideline. In this article I summarize several interesting study results in the field of text layout. If content truly is king, all aspects of text layout (and not just line length) should be treated with the utmost respect. Is readability, and therefore text layout, condemned to merely an amount of characters or words on a line of text? However, when it does, it seems to be limited to the optimal line length. Unfortunately I rarely come across a post bringing up text layout or typography (heck, I even forgot about it in my previous posts). Lists Unordered Lists Ordered Lists Other Lists HTML Block & Inline HTML Classes HTML Id HTML Iframes HTML JavaScript HTML File Paths HTML Head HTML Layout HTML Responsive HTML Computercode HTML Semantics HTML Style Guide HTML Entities HTML Symbols HTML Emojis HTML Charset HTML URL Encode HTML vs.I’ve read a lot of articles with endless bullet points on how to improve a website’s usability.
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