On: Use Plaintext Email (2019)

[malcolmgreaves]

Any history lessons for why 72 characters is the line length limit? For compatibility with printers and old-school terminals, I thought a hard limit of less than 80 characters per line was the necessary. This not the case? Or is the 72 character limit's significance for something different?

[mhd → malcolmgreaves]

You need to add room for potentially multiple levels of added quote marks.

[noizejoy → malcolmgreaves]

> Any history lessons for why 72 characters is the line length limit?

I believe it was punched cards (80 columns total, but 8 of those generally used as sequence number).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card