Quote:
Originally Posted by haertig
It is only "excess space" in the eye of the beholder.
Some text layouts invite you in, others repel you. There was a book I had once - I've lost the dang thing now! - but I remember the title ... "Looking Good in Print". It went all into font selection, space between lines, justifications, paragraph indents and everything imaginable to make your work look good and invite readers in. And also to make it easy for your readers to follow what you were writing about. Super dense text was a big no-no. As were "rivers of white space" as the book called them. Lots of great advice in that book. I remember one piece of advice - not related to this thread, but interesting anyway - "turn the page upside down". If it is inviting both right side up and upside down, you're on to something. If one orientation is still a turn-off, keep working on it. I wish I could find that book now. It had to have been 20 or 30 years ago when I bought it.
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But what looks good or inviting is very subjective, as can be seen in this very thread. There is no one size fits all, either in text layout or in most everything else. Some people want roomy margins and line height, others feel it's wasted screen real estate; some even prefer spaces between paragraphs, while for others that's anathema. Beauty and the beholder and all that.