Ideal text width

[benbrand]

Inspired by a recent thread on text alignment, I was wondering: what is your preferred width of text blocks, both as a blogger and reader of web pages? I personally prefer no more than 10-14 words per line. An example of different widths can be seen on this page: the first few paragraphs have the ideal line length (according to me) and then from the paragraph that starts with "“She’s ready,” one of Mrs. Clinton’s confidants said," the lines start getting too long - again, in my opinion. What do you think?

[OhioRealtor]

I prefer the same but a lot depends on the layout on the rest of the page. Unfortunately I can't shorten mine so I'm stuck until I upgrade... That should happen around 2015 or so...

[sadiessay-so]

I think the first paragraphs are too short, and the lines that start with "she's ready" are just right... just my $0.02

[cjharley]

I agree with Sadie. I like the length on the paragraphs that begin "She's ready..." Anything shorter than that causes too much back and forth eye movement for me.

[NathanKP]

Yeah, you usually want to keep the text about 500 or so pixels wide. It is sort of a web standard because its similar to the width of printed text.

[benbrand]

Originally Posted by cjharley

I agree with Sadie. I like the length on the paragraphs that begin "She's ready..." Anything shorter than that causes too much back and forth eye movement for me.

That's interesting. I find if the text is that long if have to shart moving my head

Originally Posted by NathanKP

Yeah, you usually want to keep the text about 500 or so pixels wide. It is sort of a web standard because its similar to the width of printed text.

I set the margins on one of my blogs yesterday at 450px after measuring the width with an actual book against the monitor. Of course, books differ in width, so 500px sounds about right.