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Subject:Re. Saving space through columns? From:Geoff Hart <geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> Date:Fri, 9 Jun 1995 12:15:16 LCL
"Kathleen" asks if using columns save space. The short answer is no...
and yes.
For the "no" side, think of it this way: all else being equal, you're
creating wasted space between the columns that you could fill with
letters. The more columns you insert, the worse it gets: in the
extreme case, with one letter per column, you've wasted close to 50%
of your page.
Now the yes: The wider a column, the larger the type and the broader
the line spacing you must use. The rationale is simple: the reader's
eye, scanning back from the right margin to the left after hitting the
end of the line, will miss the beginning of the next line if the
spacing is too tight. Try this some time: scan across a page quickly
for several lines, as if you're speed-reading, and see how many times
this happens to you. It happens to me regularly, but everyone is
different. If you narrow the columns, you can use smaller type and
closer line spacing without causing the reader to skip lines. At some
point, the increase in the amount of lines and characters per inch
compensates for the wasted space in the gutters between columns.
Where does the tradeoff occur? I'd guess you gain more than you lose
at around 10-point type in 4 or more columns. (This would vary with
page size: the wider the page, the more columns you'd need to use, and
the less likely that you'd save space.) This is one strong reason why
newspapers use this approach to layout (but the reader can also blast
through an article faster with short line lengths). You could
calculate this mathematically without much difficulty, but the point
is that there's a tradeoff. You have to pick a tradeoff you and your
reader can live with.
--Geoff Hart #8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Disclaimer: These comments are my own and don't represent the opinions
of the Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada.
