[caption id="attachment_112063" align="alignright" width="400"] The original Magna Carta document[/caption]
This is the original Magna Carta written in 1215. Parchment was very expensive in the 11th century, so thrifty scribes wrote in tiny, densely packed latin.
While it's quite beautiful, the absence of paragraphs gives it a rather impenetrable look – even allowing for the latin. It's hard for our modern eyes to traverse that sheer wall of text.
Why do we even need paragraphs?
Paragraphs serve three useful purposes in writing. Firstly they help the writer to order and organise their thoughts. Secondly, they give the reader 'rest points' as they work through the text.
And finally, paragraphs give us entry and exit points into documents – shortcuts for navigating around text. This is particularly useful on the web, where we know that readers browse, scan and snack on text much more than they do on printed texts.
What is the ideal paragraph length?
[caption id="attachment_112062" align="alignright" width="318"] Sentence Lengths in SOTU over time - Source: Language Log[/caption]
Predictably, there are lots of answers for this question, but the general consensus has been getting shorter for 200 years. Mark Liberman from Language Log wrote a script that analyzed the structure of every US presidential 'Inaugural Address' and 'State of the Union' address since the late 1700's. Of course, sentence length and paragraph length are different, but there's certainly a relationship.
As Mark's chart shows, average sentence length has gone from over 40 words per sentence, to less than 20 words in 2011. I don't have a problem with this trend, but some do.
Whatever the driving forces, we've been continually selecting for shorter sentences and paragraphs for a long time.
Elsewhere Bob Brooke's Writers' Corner advises that you 'Try to limit your paragraph to five lines – not sentences. If it's too long, break it down into a series of paragraphs on subtopics'. Of course, on the web 'five lines' changes from device to device.
The Yahoo! Style Guide says “Keep paragraphs short. Two to three sentences is often enough.”
Which brings us to an interesting question.
As FEDs/designers/UX people, we take responsibility for setting type sizing, line-heights, kerning, contrast, and all other typographic choices to create the best possible user experience.
1) Is it also our job to try to design the ideal paragraph lengths for our layouts? (most would say no).
2) The 'ideal' paragraph length surely must differ for different screen sizes? What is most comfortable to read on a Kindle or desktop surely isn't the same as what works best on an iPhone.
Take this example of the same text on two devices:
On the phone above, a lot of the usefulness of paragraphs starts to disappear when you can only see one or at best two paragraphs at a time. We get a more 'magna carta-esque' wall of text.
Continue reading %Is There a Perfect Paragraph Length for the Web?%
by Alex Walker via SitePoint