Re: Optimal line length for sales documents in pdf

[Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca>]

Two other thoughts:

Margins and white space are integral, even in online documentation. The web
pages of the past that ran right to the browser borders still cause so many
readability concerns when viewed today. And proper white space aids the
user in scanning for the information they want. The idea is to act like a
concierge, to direct the reader to the information they need, not bore them
with mounds of words.

Another thought is when a document gets printed for an RFP, the page is
usually 3-hole punched. It's hard to read when words are punched through.

-Tony



On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 10:31 AM, Di <dicorrie -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:

> 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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