3.1.5: Legibility, readability and other miscellenia. (rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan)
Description
This article is from the Robert Jordan FAQ, by John S. Novak, III jsn@concentric.net with numerous contributions by others.
3.1.5: Legibility, readability and other miscellenia. (rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan)
Usenet is a media designed to facilitate communication, and the
rasfwrj newsgroup is a fairly busy newsgroup, with many articles
streaming in every day. A good way to encourage people to read your
articles is to present them in a format which makes them pleasing to
as many eyes as possible. The following are a few helpful hints
on how to keep your articles legible.
Make a paragraph form by introducing a blank line between each
paragraph, and a blank line between quoted text and your own text.
Put "quote marks" in front of each line of quoted text. Many
newsreaders do this automatically, by putting a '>' symbol at the
beginning of each line.
Keep your line lengths to below 80 characters, preferably
somewhere in the range of 70 to 75 characters, so that people
reading news on standard 80 column terminals (that is, most of
us) can both read and quote your text easily.
Finally, make some attempt to follow the dictates of English
grammar. It is a given that people will make mistakes,
mispellings and the occasional gaffe. No one claims to be
perfect (for very long). Likewise, we all have our own style.
But in general, posts which are written in good English, with
proper capitalization and punctuation are the easiest to read.
And we all want people to read our posts with the minimum
possible effort.
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