User talk:Calimeroteknik

Hey, since your an UX designer, I was wondering if you know of any research specifically about preferred line length in easy texts like fiction and technical texts like scientific papers and encyclopedias.

I can give anecdotal evidence that I and a few people I know prefer to read fiction in small line widths, but technical texts in large line widths. It makes sense when you realize that most fiction books are sold as small format paperbacks with few characters per line, while textbooks and technical books are almost always large format hardcovers. I think it's because fiction and newspapers are read front-to-back, while in technical texts the reader has to go back and forth a lot to understand everything.

If there are studies backing this, it might convince wiki programmers to drop the text width restriction, since obviously Wikipedia is as technical as you can get among major websites.

My job isn't exactly to work as an UX designer, but I work with them, and complement their skills with reasoning and logic to ensure consistency and uniformity, but not at the cost of usability.

You are correct in pointing that all studies referenced so far about line length are about essays/fiction and their audience. I don't know of studies that target technical content and its audience.

A quick search finds articles like this: https://www.tjvantoll.com/2015/12/21/technical-blogs-line-length/ The article is saying that technical blogs violate some rule, but I believe they're aiming at optimal line length… for their audience.

When there are too many line feeds in a technical text, I find that I am disgruntled by how it interrupts my train of thought too often, and friends I asked think that as well. On the other hand, I don't buy screens so wide that I'm uncomfortable reading text from one side to the other on them, so I can't find a point where I start being inconvenienced by lines that are too long. I'm probably most happy when it stays in the 60~90em range (which fits an average of 120~180 characters, using a proportional font).