Better Marketing: How To Make Your Writing More Readable By Limiting Line Length To 60 Letters

Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes

You don’t have to agree with me, but it’s a fact:  open any trade-sized book or paperback and 90% of the time you will find the number of words on a line averages about 10 or 12.  That means about 60 letters per line.

Speed-readers can read a whole line in a glance.  Non speed-readers move their eyes once or twice, taking in about 4-6 words at a time.   If the line length is too long, say 120 characters, the eye has to move more times, which isn’t actually a problem.

The problem with reading comprehension for long text lines is when the eye has to travel back to the left side again to start over.  At 120 characters per line the eye has to travel twice as far and you know what?  The eye sometimes has trouble locating the start of the next line due to traveling so far to get to it.

Long lines of text causes slower reading and reader fatigue.  It also cause drops in comprehension.  That’s why I almost always use 60 characters per line when I send emails.   I’ve learned to eyeball it, but I knew there had to be an easy way to do it using a free program called Notepad++.

Here are the instructions:

1. write your text normally in the window
2. open a new window (ctrl-N) and type “60″ in it
3. copy the number “60″ (or line length you want) into your clipboard using Ctrl-C
4. go back to your tabbed window where your text is and select all (ctrl-A)
5. go to TextFX in the top navigation menu
6. Select “TextFX Edit” and scroll down to the bottom of the submenu and select “rewrap text to (Clipboard or 72) width”

In Notepad++ 72 is default the default rewrap length – steps 2 & 3 tell how to set it to 60.  72 letters per line is still pretty readable but I prefer 60 for emails.  Here’s why:  older email reading programs and those used by some vision impaired people only display 60 characters per line.  If your lines are longer, your emails will be full of jagged formatting on these older readers.

In addition to the vintage and vision-impaired email reader issue, internet users today are reading emails on portable devices like Blackberries and smart phones.  These devices have tiny screens and  limiting you email line length makes your emails easier to read on these high-tech devices as well.

The post author, Loren Woirhaye writes sales copy and creates marketing systems for business clients who want to slash customer acquisition costs and position their businesses For 20%-30% sales growth in the next 12-18 months. He writes regularly about marketing and life at his Entrepreneur Blog.