If you are sending out a text email newsletter to your subscribers, one thing you can do to keep everything looking professional is use a set maximum for your line length (in characters). This will keep your text from looking like this:

This is a good example of a badly formatted
paragraph
where each line gets chopped in the ugliest of
places.
There are several things that can cause this. Let’s take
a
look at them.

I’m sure you’ve seen this too many times. What causes this to happen? Well, for starters, the lines of the email messages that you send may be too long, thus forcing the reader’s email program to shove one or two words from each line onto the next one. You should be able to remedy this by using hard carriage returns (the “enter” key) at the end of 65 or so character lines. Ezine publishers constantly debate over what “the” line length standard should be. Numbers are flung around anywhere from 60 to 72 characters, but 65-66 seems to be pretty typical, and usually safe.

You have two choices: either use a monospace font (Courier, for example) and manually press the “enter” key at the end of each line or use a text editor that you have set to insert hard carriage returns at the end of each 65-character line. This is one time when a word processing program like Microsoft Word just isn’t the greatest tool to use.

Another cause of chopped lines is if you’re using hard carriage returns at the end of each line, we’ll say 65 character long, but your email program is only set to allow 60 character lines. Clearly, the lines will all get chopped here as well, but as you send it, before it even reaches the reader. Make certain your email preferences are set longer than your hard return line length.

This is just one method of examining this problem. The lesson learned is to be aware that it happens often and understand that different email programs are going to render your ezine in different ways. Download several different email programs and become familiar with them. You might be stunned that what you think you are sending is not at all what people are receiving.