50 columns should be enough for anyone!
Monday, 25 July 2005 18:21![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pneIt 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?
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no subject
Date: Monday, 25 July 2005 16:36 (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, 25 July 2005 16:51 (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, 25 July 2005 17:27 (UTC)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 =)
no subject
Date: Monday, 25 July 2005 17:45 (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: Monday, 25 July 2005 17:47 (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, 25 July 2005 18:16 (UTC)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
no subject
Date: Monday, 25 July 2005 18:18 (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, 25 July 2005 18:27 (UTC)You know why 72 was common (and not, say, 70 or 75), right? :-)
72
Date: Monday, 25 July 2005 18:47 (UTC)Re: 72
Date: Monday, 25 July 2005 18:59 (UTC)(Fortran source lines are exactly 72 characters long, too!)
no subject
Date: Monday, 25 July 2005 19:38 (UTC)