Column (typography)

Column can also more generally refer to the vertical delineations created by a typographic grid system which type and image may be positioned.

For best legibility, typographic manuals suggest that columns should be wide enough to contain roughly 60 characters per line.

However, this rule of thumb does not apply to more complex text that contain multiple images or illustrations, footnotes, running heads, folios, and captions.

One method of creating columns for the web is to place text within an HTML table element, often with the border set to zero.

These methods were not as straightforward as using HTML tables, which made a tableless three column layout a sort of holy grail once these techniques were discovered in the early 2000s.