ยง Write thin to write well
- Set column width to be absurdly low which forces your writing to get better (?!)
- That is, when you write, say in vim or emacs, you put one clause per line. Then when you are done, you can use pandoc or something similar to convert what you wrote into standard prose. But the artificial line breaks, which results in thin lines, make it easier to edit, and also easier to comprehend diffs if you use git to track changes.
- The vast majority on book typography agrees on 66 characters per line in one-column layouts and 45 characters per line in multi-column layouts as being the optimal numbers for reading. The text-block should also be placed assymetrically on the page, with the margins in size order being
inner. The line height should be set at 120% of the highest character hight for normal book typefaces, but should be increased for typewriter typefaces and can be decreased slightly with shorter lines. A small set of typefaces are economic without losing readability, and if you use them you can increase these numbers slightly. But any more than 80 characters and anything less than 40 characters is suboptimal for texts that are longer than a paragraph or so.
- If you adhere to these very simple principles, you will have avoided like 95% of the typographic choices that can make texts hard or slow to read.
- Try 36 letters per column.
Also see VimPencil
set wrap linebreak nolist
call plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged')
Plug 'junegunn/goyo.vim'
call plug#end()
"Goyo settings
let g:goyo_width = 60
let g:goyo_height = 999
let g:goyo_margin_top = 0
let g:goyo_margin_bottom = 0