Re: Length of line

At least in English, the grammar around hyphenation at the end of a line is
based up syllables. There are a number of other rules around this usage as
well:
http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000129.htm

As an experiment, I reduced my view-port in Gmail, and note that Google's
minimum line-length there was 72 characters, which appears to be in keeping
with other research:

​"​
65 characters (2.5 times the Roman alphabet) is often referred to as the
perfect measure. Derived from this number is the ideal range that all
designers should strive for: 45 to 75 characters (including spaces and
punctuation) per line for print. Many web designers (including me) apply
that rule directly to the web.
​"
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/09/balancing-line-length-font-size-responsive-web-design/


"
The optimal line length for your body text is considered to be 50-60
characters per line, including spaces (“Typographie”, E. Ruder).
​..​
In order to avoid the drawbacks of too long and too short lines, but still
energize your readers and keep them engaged, we suggest keeping your text
within the range of 50-75 characters per line.
​"
http://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability​


This also appears to be in agreement with other resources quoted previously.

​JF​



On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 8:12 AM, David MacDonald <david100@sympatico.ca>
wrote:

> Hi Shwetank
>
> Can you help us understand how hyphenation works in those languages? In
> English and French, (the languages I speak), the web the page just wraps
> the entire word if it doesn't fit. So there is not generally hyphenation
> for web writing.
>
> Cheers,
> David MacDonald
>
>
>
> *Can**Adapt* *Solutions Inc.*
>
> Tel:  613.235.4902 <(613)%20235-4902>
>
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> <http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmacdonald100>
>
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>
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> On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 8:12 AM, Shwetank Dixit <shwetank@barrierbreak.com
> > wrote:
>
>> FWIW, I agree with John that character length is not a good criteria at
>> all for this purpose, especially from the viewpoint of non-english
>> languages. I believe the research and guidelines mentioned in this
>> discussion have not included languages from scripts apart from the Latin
>> script (please correct me if I’m wrong) like Devnagari, Gurkumikhi, or any
>> from the CJK ones for example.
>>
>> I am especially concerned about the possibility of significantly
>> increased ‘hyphenation’ that this could result in (which John also
>> mentioned) causing bigger problems from a cognitive perspective.
>> —
>> Shwetank
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, Jan 11, 2017 at 4:32 PM, Michael Pluke <
>> Mike.Pluke@castle-consult.com> wrote:
>>
>> I can see that the choice of characters as the unit of measurement can
>> result in very different end-results that you get depending on the chosen
>> font-size and font-face. This may make this unit less useful from an LV
>> perspective.
>>
>>
>>
>> However I still think that, from a cognitive perspective, it is relevant
>> and important to set a maximum line length in characters. Long lines with
>> many words/characters are demonstrably hard to read for everyone but, most
>> particularly for people with dyslexia.  The 80 characters in SC 1.4.8
>> <https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-contrast-visual-presentation.html>
>> will cause significant difficulties for many people with dyslexia.
>>
>>
>>
>> EA has quoted several research-based sources that offer realistic
>> line-length proposals. From reading the extract from 'Dyslexia in the
>> Digital Age' that EA linked-to (http://tinyurl.com/jra7hk3) I don’t
>> think that it gives very strong evidence that 55 characters is the only
>> choice. I’m a great fan of the realistic proposals that Luz Rello makes
>> (based on her research (http://www.luzrello.com/Publi
>> cations_files/uais2015.pdf)) so I have confidence for specifying line
>> lengths in the 44-66 range (although it was non-dyslexic people who
>> benefitted most from 44 character columns). The British Dyslexia Style
>> Guide http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/common/ckeditor/filemanager/us
>> erfiles/About_Us/policies/Dyslexia_Style_Guide.pdf recommends that
>> “Lines should not be too long: 60 to70 characters.”
>>
>>
>>
>> *Conclusion*: Based on all of the above I think that:
>>
>>    - To benefit LV users we should avoid having SCs that give a line
>>    length based on the number of characters;
>>    - To benefit people with dyslexia (and also the general population)
>>    the 1.4.8-based 80 character maximum in proposal #51
>>    <https://github.com/w3c/wcag21/issues/51> should be reduced to a
>>    figure no greater than 70 characters (and probably no less than 60).
>>
>>
>>
>> Mike
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* John Foliot [mailto:john.foliot@deque.com]
>> *Sent:* 10 January 2017 23:56
>> *To:* David MacDonald <david100@sympatico.ca>
>> *Cc:* WCAG <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
>> *Subject:* Re: Length of line
>>
>>
>>
>> TL;DR - Using 'character' as a unit of measurement is extremely
>> problematic, and I do not support it's use here.
>>
>>
>>
>> **************
>>
>>
>>
>> Some thoughts after today's call.
>>
>>
>>
>> I personally have significant concerns over prescribing a fixed number of
>> characters, especially such a low number, as a unit of measurement.
>>
>>
>>
>> *Internationalization:*
>>
>> When we factor in both Internationalization and languages other than
>> English, we will quickly arrive at a point where the number 25 is smaller
>> than numerous words in different languages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
>> /Longest_words), which will then require word hyphenization (most
>> probably supplied by the content author, until such time as AI can do that
>> job seamlessly). This then suggests to me that we will start to see
>> 'forced' line-breaks again (using the presentational <br>), which could
>> have a significant impact on screen flow in RWD (Responsive) layouts (i.e.
>> the cure being worse the the symptom).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *Font-size and font-face choices:*
>>
>> Equally, as mentioned on the call, another factor in measuring this,
>> related to horizontal scrolling, is font-size. For those of you using
>> HTML-rich mail clients, and using a 25 character-count example taken from
>> http://www.litscape.com/words/length/25_letters/25_letter_words.html:
>>
>>
>>
>> ​​
>>
>> electroencephalographical
>>
>> ​
>>
>> (Gmail's
>>
>> ​
>>
>> '
>>
>> ​
>>
>> S
>>
>> mall' sizing)​
>>
>> ​
>>
>> electroencephalographical      (Gmail's
>>
>> ​
>>
>> 'Normal' sizing)​
>>
>> ​
>>
>> electroencephalographical      (Gmail's
>>
>> ​
>>
>> 'Large' sizing)​
>>
>> ​
>>
>> electroencephalographical      (Gmail's
>>
>> ​
>>
>> 'Huge' sizing)​
>>
>>
>>
>> Q: How do we test for "success" here? Even the final line above (Gmail's
>> "Huge" font-size) could introduce horizontal scrolling at some level of
>> magnification on some devices, yet at 25 characters "meets" the current
>> wording of the proposed SC.
>>
>>
>>
>> Additionally, different font-faces will have different font-width
>> characteristics, depending on the font-face chosen. For example:
>>
>>
>>
>> ​
>>
>> electroencephalographical      (Gmail 'sans-serif', size 'normal')
>>
>> ​
>>
>> electroencephalographical    (Gmail 'Verdana', size 'normal')
>>
>> ​
>>
>> electroencephalographical     (Gmail 'Wide', size 'normal')
>>
>>
>>
>> ...once again, depending on the font-face choice we have 3 different
>> line-lengths, and so I question the overall choice of "character" as a unit
>> of measurement here.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *How to 'Succeed'/Author push-back:*
>>
>> The current proposed language for this SC reads:
>>
>> For the visual presentation of all text, a mechanism is available such
>> that line length is user adjustable, to 25 characters, with no
>> two-dimensional scrolling required, and with the following exceptions.
>>
>>
>>
>> However, it is unclear what a page author can or should do to meet this
>> requirement
>>
>> ​, as it very much feels like a User-Agent requirement as much as
>> anything else. For SC 1.4.8, one technique is
>>
>> G204 <https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2016/WD-WCAG20-TECHS-20160105/G204>: *Not
>> interfering with the user agent's reflow of text as the viewing window is
>> narrowed*
>>
>> *​, *which​ seems to me to at least address the larger issue (avoid
>> horizontal scrolling) without prescribing a specific line-length.
>>
>>
>>
>> Finally, the current Success Criteria that requires an 80 character
>> line-length (
>>
>> SC 1.4.8
>> <https://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-contrast-visual-presentation.html>)
>> is a AAA Success Criteria requirement, and yet this new proposed SC is at
>> level A, at roughly 1/3 the 80-char limit.
>>
>> ​Sadly (but not totally unreasonably) ​
>>
>> I suspect that we will get significant push-back at level A
>>
>> ​.
>>
>>
>>
>> JF​
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 3:31 PM, David MacDonald <david100@sympatico.ca>
>> wrote:
>>
>> I'm the manager of Issue #57 line length.
>>
>> https://github.com/w3c/wcag21/issues/57
>>
>> I was asked to explain why 25 characters was chosen as the threshold. I
>> deferred to the LVTF
>>
>> ​ since I did not write that requirement​
>>
>> . One point that was mentioned was that 25 characters is about the width
>> of most news article columns.
>>
>> I did a survey of several top news sites on the web and measured the
>> length of characters when text size is 100% (no zoom)
>>
>> -CNN 74
>>
>> ​ ​
>>
>> characters without counting spaces 87 with spaces. could narrow to 35 (w/
>> spaces) in Responsive
>> -NBC 61 no spaces 73 with spaces, could narrow to 39 (w/ spaces)
>> -ABC NEWS 81 no spaces 92 Spaces, could narrow to 43 in responsive
>> -FoxNews 67 no space 79 spaces could narrow to 45 in responsive
>> -Le Droit french 74 no space, 86 with spaces, no responsive
>> -Google News 73 No Spaces 87 with spaces could narrow to 44 in responsive
>> - Huff post French 67 no spaces 79 with spaces no responsive
>>
>> ​N
>>
>> one of these sites passed the new SC proposal of 25 characters. They all
>> went to horizontal scroll when window was narrowed less than those
>>
>> ​minimum character ​
>>
>> widths shown above.
>>
>> ​Do we
>>
>>  want to make the minimum a little wider, say 45 or 50 characters.
>>
>> For reference, the following is about 25 characters:
>>
>>
>> "This test assesses basic"
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>> David MacDonald
>>
>>
>>
>> *Can**Adapt* *Solutions Inc.*
>>
>> Tel:  613.235.4902 <(613)%20235-4902>
>>
>> LinkedIn
>> <http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmacdonald100>
>>
>> twitter.com/davidmacd
>>
>> GitHub <https://github.com/DavidMacDonald>
>>
>> www.Can-Adapt.com <http://www.can-adapt.com/>
>>
>>
>>
>> *  Adapting the web to all users*
>>
>> *            Including those with disabilities*
>>
>>
>>
>> If you are not the intended recipient, please review our privacy policy
>> <http://www.davidmacd.com/disclaimer.html>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> John Foliot
>>
>> Principal Accessibility Strategist
>>
>> Deque Systems Inc.
>>
>> john.foliot@deque.com
>>
>>
>>
>> Advancing the mission of digital accessibility and inclusion
>>
>>
>


-- 
John Foliot
Principal Accessibility Strategist
Deque Systems Inc.
john.foliot@deque.com

Advancing the mission of digital accessibility and inclusion