The War On Legibility

Your browser contains two useful commands: Zoom In (or Make Text Bigger), and Zoom Out (or Make Text Smaller).

Question: When is the last time you opened up a web page and decided to Zoom Out? When was the last time you opened a web page and thought to yourself, "My god, this text is just too goldarn big."

I'm going to guess never, or at the most, rarely. I'm going to guess you only zoom in. Why? Because web developers like to make text small.

There are consequences to this fetish of the nano, and none of them are good news for the reader. Obviously, smaller text is harder to read. Even worse, small text tends to lead to long lines of text. It's much easier to read text when there are fewer words per line.

There is no reason for this nonsense. Both larger text and shorter lines are wins for the reader. It's time to get over Tiny Text Syndrome. Make your font size bigger.