jim said:

The Studs Turkel however has 60 chars per line compared to 70 chars per line in your example PDF -- and as compared to 50 chars per line or less for historical novels.

jim, you need to pay better attention.

Less chars per line tend to make things more readable while taking more paper.  Too many chars per line make things very painful to read ... http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/finetypography/ht/line_length.htm

yes, jim, i know all about line-length and readability... (and if you do a citation, quote _bringhurst_, not about.com) *** those who _were_ paying attention know that i said explicitly i retained the p.g. linebreaks, accounting for the long lines... it's also the case that michael mcd seemed to accept the fontsize and the margins and the pagesize, which means that his eyes didn't particular mind the long lines, and since the .pdf was intended for him, he's the ultimate judge here. even more so, people who were paying attention also know that i said i would be rewrapping the text and doing a .pdf with a bigger fontsize. since the pagesize and the margins will stay the same, that means shorter lines _by_definition_, bringing them to the 50-65 characters bringhurst suggests. in other words, jim, your post was completely unnecessary. -bowerbird