

Furthermore it can be difficult to continue onto the correct line in large blocks of text. This is because the line length makes it difficult to gauge where the line starts and ends. Too wide: if a line of text is too long the reader’s eyes will have a hard time focusing on the text.Setting aside the specific number for the moment, what are the downsides of violating this range? Other sources suggest that up to 75 characters is acceptable. Ruder concluded that the optimal line length for body text is 50–60 characters per line, including spaces (“Typographie”, E. Some fundamental exploration of line length and readability was conducted by Emil Ruder, a mid-twentieth century Swiss graphic designer. Indeed, it shouldn’t merely be your design that dictates the width of your text - the ability of users to easily read through the text should also be a critical factor. Varying line lengths ultimately end up impacting the overall readability of a site’s text. The optimal text line length for e-commerce sites & accessibility concernsġ) General Principles Regarding Text Line Lengths and Readability.How overly long lines of text negatively impact e-commerce users.General principles regarding text line lengths and readability.In this article we’ll discuss the following: Indeed, our Premium UX research and large-scale e-commerce UX testing reveals that long lines of text are typically perceived by users as intimidating and overwhelming.Īs result, users faced with overly long lines of text are more likely to avoid reading the text.Ĭonsequently, as readability drops more users will fail to fully understand a product’s or service’s benefits, and thus decide that a particular product or service won’t meet their needs. Having the right amount of characters on each line is key to the readability of your text. Our large-scale testing reveals that text line length often makes product or service descriptions unnecessarily difficult for users to read.Shorter or longer line lengths can hurt readability.The optimal line length for body text is 50–75 characters.
