Quote:
Originally Posted by kacir
If you noticed my posts previously, you know I like to grumble about the way Kindle presents text.
There is a very good reason behind many aspects of formatting a book. It might not be obvious, but typography has been evolving for 500 years to optimize reading comfort.
There is optimal line length. Just try to read on Kindle with the widest margins or on a 24 inch monitor with line spanning the entire width of the monitor. Neither is good. In the first case your eyes have to jump lines very quickly (and there are other problems) in the other case you will spend way too much time searching for the next line because your eyes can't track to the beginning of the line and you can't remember what the beginning of the line was.
Try to search the net for the optimum line length (50-60 characters including spaces). Then take a well typeset paper book and count the number of letters. The count will be a little bit higher than the optimum (75), but a bit longer is more acceptable than shorter line.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
I know. The LaTeX typesetter uses a width of 67 characters for example. That is why the margins are so wide on an A4. I can actually have around 55 characters on the Kindle, but it still feels a bit short.
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With the adjustments I make to the CSS of my books I get about 70 characters per line and 41 lines per page; this looks and feels the most balanced layout to me, and resembles a printed page from a paperback the closest. The left and right margins have to be quite wide for this though - which some (me included until a few weeks ago) would see as a waste of screen-space.