Dense text.
Virginia DeBolt has written what is possibly the single most important tip for making websites readable — after good writing and an appropriate font, of course — and that’s line-height:
The CSS line-height property determines the distance or spacing between the lines of text on the page. In the print world, this property is called leading. …
Generally, you don’t want the lines to be too close together or too far apart. You want enough space between the lines to create maximum readability, or the appearance of ease of reading. You want an open and inviting look rather than a “dense” look, which discourages reading.
[Via : Web Teacher — Improve readability with line-height.]
Open text.
She shows some examples, and explains how to do line-height properly.
I must say, line-height is probably the thing that most affects me on websites. Dense text is highly likely to drive me away from even a well-written and well-presented site.
Dense text is tight and pressured and hard to read. Open text is relaxed and easy. It gives you room to ‘breathe’ while you read.
The only thing to watch out for is adding so much line-height that you can’t stay on track, but Virginia covers that too.
If you haven’t considered line-height before nip over to the tutorial and store the technique away in your coding toolbox.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I was thinking that the look of my blog was not reader-friendly when I read this. Changing the line-spacings was too technical for me, but changing the blog template to one with wider spaces wasn’t. Now it’s much easier to read, I think. peajayar@blogspot.com will find it.
Oh dear. That’s peajayar.blogspot.com And I clicked submit before I said thank you for yet another useful tip.
I’m glad you could find a way to do it, Pat. I think understanding the idea of line-height is useful, so blog owners can do as you did and choose a better template.
Those who can create and implement stylesheets for themselves can then finetune things to more exactly suit their web pages.
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