Ask HN: Why 435?

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Paul Graham's essays (example: http://paulgraham.com/donate.html) are presented in a column 435px wide. Is there a tactical reason for this?

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There's probably nothing specific about 435px, but there's a good UX reason why the text doesn't take up the whole page:

https://wiki.c2.com/?TenWordLine

https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability

If you look at PG's blog, 435px comes out to just about 10 words, so he's hewing to the guidelines. A bunch of other sites do this as well: take a look at the main column of the Facebook News Feed, or the NYTimes. Google Search Results go a bit wider (about 600px = 12-13 words IIRC), but the general principle holds.

Thanks for the links!

Remember arguing about this with my Dad when I was (no shit) 7 years old, laying out thermal printed paper columns on waxed boards for a newspaper. He had worked with lead columns and said the physical realities of handling LinoType slugs had shrunk column sizes and made the "common wisdom" change in his earlier years, and that it hadn't come back from that.

Older newspapers often had two columns on a smaller page; and line lengths in the 20 word range, iirc.

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