Re: Optimal line length for sales documents in pdf

[Di <dicorrie -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Thank you all for taking the time to share your different points of view.
Solo writer in a job for coming up to eight years, there is a risk of
getting entrenched where I don't know I am entrenched. I was in need of
fresh perspectives. New information is good and some humour never goes
astray!

"The width of your eyes" - that phrase probably evolved. An Information
Mapping workshop back in the day showed me the value in being able to see
what is written on a a line of text by looking at it and without actually
having to read it. (Of course, there are other rules that go with that,
apart from the physical length of line.) When I started in my current role
they had invested in a set of standard templates that looked and worked
fine, despite the odd criticism from a member of staff - usually about the
standard body text indent. The body text is roughly as wide as my eyes
(outside corners) when I hold up a printed document to my face. It is part
of my role to go through the standard templates with new members of staff.
So I guess the phrase happened there.

Regards,

Di






On 26 September 2015 at 02:41, Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net> wrote:

> On Fri, 25 Sep 2015 10:21:15 -0400, Kathleen MacDowell <
> kathleen -dot- eamd -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
>
> Perhaps the idea of "the width of your eyes" was meant to allow for
>> scanning, which could make it easier for people to read materials,
>> especially technical ones.
>>
>> Try reading a very long sentence having the page set horizontally and I
>> think you'll grasp the idea. There's a lot more to reading/understanding
>> than line width or sentence length, of course, but there's no reason to
>> add to the readers' task.
>>
>
> Testing whether long lines are readable is a personal issue. Until
> yesterday I would have said that long lines are terribly difficult because
> the eye cannot correctly move from one line to the next, or even stay
> focused on one line, if the line is "too long".
>
> Yesterday I got new eyeglasses that do not tilt on my face like my
> previous pair. I no longer find that one eye sees the wrong line part of
> the time. The new ones are truly ugly, but very sturdy.
>
> Still, if nobody is going to read the text beyond the first paragraph,
> then lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do
> eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad
> minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex
> ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate
> velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat
> cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id
> est laborum.
>
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