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In a recent study on the effects of line length on reading speed, comprehension and user statisfaction conducted by the Software Usability ResearchLaboratory (SURL) at Wichita State University it was found that 95 character per line (cpl) was the most efficient overall.
The Procedure
The study was conducted in a controlled environment using local files to reduce download time, a previous and next button and IE6 as the prefered browser. Each participant read eight short news articles with two news articles for each line length, 35, 55, 75 & 95 character per line. After reading each article and a reading satisfaction questionnaire after each set. A final questionnaire was filled in following the last article.
The Results
Reading efficiency was calculated by multiplying the reading speed by the percent correct on the comprehension questions within the questionnaire. As you can see in the above graph there is a significant difference between 35cpl and 95cpl.
What does this mean?
There is pretty much one thing to take away from this, if you are a publisher of great content (which is also fantastic for search engine optimisation), design your news content with the above in mind and people will enjoy your content better and take much more away from it.
