For ideal screen reading, your body text blocks should contain between 50 and 80 characters per line (including spaces and punctuation). In most cases, a line length of around 65 characters is optimum, but it’s okay to set a longer line if you’re using a larger font size, or a shorter line if you’re using a smaller font size.

You set the line length by adjusting the text block’s width property. To help you find the correct width, follow these steps:

  1. Paste your text into the HTML Editor and then click Run.
  2. In the Results window, select some of the text in any line. The length of the selection appears here:
    3. 0 characters
  3. Adjust the selection until you get the number of characters you want for your line length.
  4. In the CSS Editor, adjust the body element’s width property until the text block is just wide enough to accommodate your selected text.