Peter Villevoye's MarginBox, July 1, 2002 (a spoof "Nielsen AlertBox" column...)

Number 1 Rule for Readability

Summary

Most websites (even Mr. Nielsen's) don't comply to the
Number 1 Rule for Readability: Use Proper Margins !
Too small (or the lack of) margins make reading difficult.
See a copied example of Nielsen's original web column.

While ancient Egyptians and European monks already discovered that using a good area of "whitespace" around a block of text increases the legibility of long texts, most webdesigners still think that cramming the available screen-estate with as much text as possible, is the way to go. How wrong they are...

On-screen Reading Difficult ?

Most computer-users don't seem to like on-screen reading.
They rather print a long text on a piece of paper and read it afterwards, if they have to. However, we're reading continously text on-screen. Menu's, filenames, dialogue boxes and many applications even involve intensive on-screen reading:

• Websites
• Email-software
• Word-processing
• PDF-material

But is it a matter of technical shortcomings of the computer screen ?
Are screen pixels really that coarse or out of focus to read, is the flickering low refresh rate of modern CRT's still a nuisance ?

Not a Matter of Technique

Recent generations of graphic display cards and cathod ray tubes (CRT's) have dealt with these problems and especially liquid crystal displays (LCD's) have omitted all these effects simply by using a pixel-sharp, non-flickering display technique. So unless when a CRT is out of focus or when an LCD is set on an interpolating resolution mode, screen-reading is not hampered by any hardware technique.
Current computer displays have no problem displaying text in a decent way.

On the software-side, the choice of a typeface and size can pose some difficulties. Most webdesigners know by now that italic text, too small (or fixed) text sizes or outrageous typefaces for long texts should be used with care. The screen software might render characters in a jaggy or cluttered format. But most systems are veru well able to crisply render characters bit-by-bit or even anti-aliased.

A Scientific Explanation

Research in legibility revealed that when people read larger blocks of text, the eye doesn't really look at all the characters individually but "scans" the upper area of a textline, recognizing the overall shape of complete words – not single characters. (That's why CAPITALIZED TEXT is also harder to read.) Gaining speed, the eye quickly needs to become aware of the end of a line and the beginning of a new line. "Whitespace" (while it doesn't necessarily need to be white) around blocks of text and between paragraphs lets the eye easily distinguish the borders of a whole text block and the separate paragraphs and lines within.

The eye simply needs those margins to read texts.
Look at books, brochures, letters, even your handwriten notes, there's always a proper amount of margin. Look at many poorly designed websites, emails and certain views in word-processing software: from edge to edge, crammed.

The fact that computer users still prefer to print text on a piece of paper, is not because the paper is easier to read, but mainly because the printer applies at least some helpful margin to the sheet of paper, regardless of the on-screen view.

Advantages

The use of margins makes a text more inviting and easier to read.
At first glance, a text with proper margins will appear easier to read, because our brain sees no difficulties in reading through it. So viewers will continue to read until they have sufficient information or they're not interested anymore.

A text which lacks margins will make a viewer haunt for something else on the page which will reveal the needed information in an easier way. When nothing else gives any clue or serves as an alternative, the viewer will most likely lose interest and leave the page.

Besides, a proper amount of space around any object (text or image) makes the object stand-out, appear more attractive and easier to concentrate on.

The Number Drill

An AlertBox column can't exist without any numbers to stake the claim ! So this spoof also tosses some numbers* into the arena.

In our survey we presented websites with similar content, but alternated these samples with and without proper margins. The results showed that only 29% of the group confronted with a non-margin webpage took the effort of reading the text below the first headline, 18% read a second paragraph, and only 7% read further than the first 2 paragraphs.

In the group which were presented margined texts, 87% read below the first headline, 68% read beyond the first paragraph and 53% read even further. This means that using margins accounts for an astonishing increase of 300% in initial legibility.

The exact width or height of the margins didn't seem to be crucial criteria.
In our survey, margins between 1 to 4 centimeters (appr. 0,5 to 1,5 inch) were used.

Available Techniques

Mr. Marc Andreessen c.s. has provided the typical "plain paragraph" (the P tag) with some extra linespace above and below, and all web-browsers have chosen to let the content of the window (the BODY tag) indent just a few pixels from the window edges. Unless webdesigners state these specs otherwise, paragraphs will have some extra linespace (that's good – don't mess with that) but only a few pixels margin on the left and right sides of a paragraph. That's definitely not enough.

There are 3 techniques to apply margins to a text block:

• the simple BlockQuote tag (available since HTML version 1)
• the use of layout tables (by adding columns along the text)
• the padding and margin settings in Cascading Style Sheets

So there's no technical excuse not to engineer any margin.

Conclusion

Use proper margins. Don't believe Mr. Nielsen, when it comes to legibility of text.
His very own website and especially his earlier Nielsen AlertBox columns, are a perfect example of how the lack of margins around an interesting text yields it unattractive to read (although he does a good job structuring it with headers and "highlighting" keywords). But for the rest, the readability sucks. That's why his books (which have proper margins) are much easier to read and he's making money after all...

* These numbers are completely unaccounted for. They just reflect my personal opinion and impression, and are in no way the results of any serious research.