Robert Bringhurst informs us that a satisfactory line length of text is anything from 45 to 75 characters. If there are more than one column on the page, 40–50 characters is a better average. It’s all in the typography bible, “The Elements of Typographic Style”, so it’s true.

Although these rules are easier to implement and control in print, they apply in the internet also. In print you can usually control the outcome. Online, not so much. There are all these different operating systems and browsers that render all the different fonts according to different rules. Some of these combinations might not support your primary font choice, so they use the second one. Pretty quickly it gets really complicated, and testing each different scenario is not feasible.

What I like to do is set my text so that my main font choice on my main browser on my main operating system will display around 66 characters per line, which is regarded as the ideal length. Doing this, all the other possibilities should stay inside the 45–75 range — or at least really, really close to it.

But what is it all for?

Sure, it’s a way of making it easier for people to read text. And this is a good thing, right?

Some big and popular websites don’t really mind about the character counts on their lines. Wikipedia expands the lines as far as it’s technically possible. When you reach the end of a line, finding the next line might be challenging. At least for most of us.

Are we, the people who optimize character counts on lines, actually doing a disservice to people? I mean, reading text that has lines, that have just the perfect amount of characters, is so easy and pleasant it might make our brain lazy. The only way to make reading longer lines of text easier, is to practice. And to practice, you need longer lines of text. All around.

Maybe we should be looking at the overall user experience of the web and not just the site we’re currently working on.