Mr Quincy Magoo is a cartoon character who was created in 1949. He is a wealthy, short-statured retiree who gets into a series of sticky situations as a result of his nearsightedness, compounded by his stubborn refusal to admit the problem.
There’s a little bit of Mr Magoo in all of us, especially once we start approaching our thirties and forties. That’s why it’s so important to have clearly readable text on your website, even if your 20-something year old designer thinks tiny text in this season’s colors is so much trendier.
You can’t just use any font in any size on your website and assume that it’s easily readable.
Choose a good font
There are only certain fonts that you can safely use on your website, and some of them are plain ugly and hard to read.
(Just because Courier is web-safe, doesn’t mean you should use it as your main font.)
Choose a good text size
The size and the color of the text can also make it unreadable, even to those with good eyesight. Text is hard to read when it’s too small or too large.
A good size for your main body text is 14px.
Play nicely with colors
Is the color of your text the most readable it could be? The most readable text is very dark text on a very light background. Pure black text on a bright white background can be a bit too jarring, so a dark gray on an extremely light gray/off-white background is a good choice for your ‘body’ text.
Other colors are good for headings, but not for the main body of text.
And white text on a dark background can cause eye-strain very quickly…
…and should be avoided unless done by a true expert.
Is that a link?
Is it obvious what is clickable and what isn’t? If you make text blue, and/or underline it, someone is going to click on it. Isn’t it frustrating that the word ‘clickable’ in this paragraph isn’t really a link?
Can your visitors easily tell at a glance whether something is a link or not? Do your links look clickable?
Avoid big blocks of text
Are your paragraphs too long? In print, paragraphs are normally 4 or 5 sentences long. But that is way too difficult to read on a screen. Break your copy into very short paragraphs of 3 to 5 lines each. Larger blocks of text are just too cumbersome to read quickly. Adding subheadings also helps your visitors to read down the page more easily.
Are your lines of text too long or short?
Does your line-length help make your copy easily readable? Every time you reach the end of a sentence, your eyes have to find the beginning of the next sentence. Do lines of text stretch across the entire length of widescreen monitors? Do people look like they’re watching a tennis match while they try to read your text?
If the average number of words in your main column is around 15 words per line, it’s easy enough to read. Any more than that, and you risk fatiguing your readers’ eyes.
Your sidebar (a narrow column of text alongside your main text area) should have a slightly smaller font size than your main text. You don’t want to have too few words per line, either, because that interrupts the flow of reading, too.
Remember Mr Magoo
So, next time you look at your website, think of poor Mr Magoo, and whether he can read your website.
A Personal Note
Tomorrow morning I’ll be on a plane with my family, flying to New Zealand for a family vacation. I’ll be back on November 9.
