You can turn on a little vertical line in many text editors and IDEs which show you how long a certain number of characters is.
It's usually called a ruler, standard lengths are 80 and 120 because of historical restraints on screen width.
It's mainly for code, not writing. Code is always monospaced, heavily favors short lines for structural reasons, and has meaningful indentation.
I like it for writing too though.
Arguably the entire concept of line length has been obsoleted by linewrap and proper graphical interfaces with WYSIWYG text editors. Why wouldn't you edit in a format which shows the final version? Why fuss over line lengths no reader will care about?
That's not wrong, but I find editing easier in an environment clearly setup for editing. It's not obtrusive or prescriptive, it's just there as a reminder. Their artificiality is what keeps me in the mental state to edit instead of read, because this is not and should not be the final version.
If I had more time, I would have written a different letter.
- Rew
Nightly Notes
Writing is getting faster. I'm spending less time debating things before settling down, and it's getting easier to stream out a first draft. Now to determine how to apply that to longer posts instead of one shot drafts.
The weekend awaits,
- Rew