50 columns should be enough for anyone!

[pne]

It used to be quasi-standard that email and Usenet messages were to be limited to 80 columns or fewer—preferably with some slack (e.g. lines being 72 characters long) so that they could stand a couple of levels of quotation without exceeding the 80-character limit.

Later, people started to post with longer lines—either with a longer line limit (say, 100 characters) or simply without line breaks at all, assuming that everyone's reading software would line-wrap automatically. This occasionally produced some ire among the old-timers.

So, given that many people seem to want to use long lines, perhaps because display resolutions are increasing—why is it that email sent through the Yahoo! web interface seems to wrap at around 50 characters?

It seems strange to me that they would put out something with less than 80 characters per line nowadays. Why is this? Is their screen so full of advertising that wider boxes wouldn't fit in? Is the font too big? Do they only have 5/8 size punch cards in the big mainframe in the back?

Comments

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

"Is their screen so full of advertising that wider boxes wouldn't fit in?" seems most accurate, based on my limited memory of sending things through their web interface.

[weatherpixie.livejournal.com]

I can categorically state we don't use punch card mainframes. Just good old BSD. No idea why the 50 character wrap, it may just have been chosen as something that looked nice with the webmail client...

[bride.livejournal.com]

I thought Yahoo was configurable to anything between 45 and 120... that might be for viewing only, not sending/replying, but I can't verify any of that right now.

When I was participating in a job hunting seminar, they advised all e-mail for job applications be limited to 45 or 50 columns. The reason they gave was that you can't know how everyone else is reading their e-mail (web client, desktop client, hand held device, etc.) and, thus, how they have their text wrapping set and you can't know what the screen resolution is going to be. So, it's safer to chop it off manually at something small. And narrower columns are easier on the eyes than having it too wide anyway.

I've always stuck with 75 characters wide because that's what Pine/Pico was configured to on the UBC University Computing servers =)

[bride.livejournal.com]

Uh, hmmm... My comment disappeared. *scratch head* O_o

But I said something along the lines of: I think Yahoo is configurable to anything between 45-120 characters wide, but I don't know for sure and can't verify right now.

You have no idea what everyone else is reading their e-mail with (web client, desktop client, a hand held device with a teeny screen, etc.), there's no telling what the screen resolution is ahead of time. If you're doing something important, like applying for a job by e-mail, your first hurdle is to avoid annoying the person that's going to see your application and decide whether to pass you on or dump you.

In this case, it would be better to chop it off early because the skinny column will be easier on their eyes than a wide, weirdly wrapped column even if it takes the risk of having to make them scroll.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Though if they have a hand-held device with a tiny screen... imagine if that screen is 40 characters wide.

Now consider the effect
that
results when you use 45-
char
acter lines compared to
what
would happen if you used
80-c
haracter lines... and
I be
gin to wonder which would
be w
orse... :p

[rydel23.livejournal.com]

That's Yahoo. I had the same kind of problem with Yahoo Groups. And y!mail also does some strange wrapping sometimes.

[bride.livejournal.com]

Yup, which is partially why I stopped using Yahoo.

[bride.livejournal.com]

Oh, for crying out loud, it's reappeared. I'm so sorry, pne =P =P

[mendel.livejournal.com]

It used to be quasi-standard that email and Usenet messages were to be limited to 80 columns or fewer—preferably with some slack (e.g. lines being 72 characters long) so that they could stand a couple of levels of quotation without exceeding the 80-character limit.

You know why 72 was common (and not, say, 70 or 75), right? :-)

72

[pne.livejournal.com]

Hm... no, I don't. Care to enlighten me?

Re: 72

[mendel.livejournal.com]

Columns 73-80 on IBM punch cards were sequence numbers, used by the card sorter if the stack got out of order (dropped, for instance). Columns 1-72 made two 36-bit words. When hackers of the era needed to choose some value <80 for line length 72 was the obvious choice.

(Fortran source lines are exactly 72 characters long, too!)