On reading width, and why this page has one column
A long piece of writing does not want navigation either side of it. This page proves the layout notices: with no sidebar and no right-hand column in the markup, it centres the content and gets out of the way.
The divider above is the one decorative flourish kept from the original design. It is geometry rather than iconography — diamonds and lozenges in the accent colour — so it carries the character of the theme without tying it to any particular subject.
The measure
Typographers call the width of a column of text its measure, and the reason it matters is mechanical rather than aesthetic. When a line is too long, the eye has to travel back across the page to find the start of the next one, and it loses its place. You notice the effect as tiredness rather than as difficulty, which is why people rarely identify the cause.
The usual guidance is somewhere between sixty-five and seventy-five characters. This paragraph is set at roughly that, and you can test the claim by widening the window: the column stops growing while the page keeps going.
Anything that makes a reader work harder than the content requires is a cost, and it is paid by every reader, every time.
Serif, and why
Most website themes are set in a sans-serif face, usually because dashboards are, and most themes are built by people who spend their days in dashboards. For running text it is a habit rather than a decision. A well-set serif is easier to read at length, which is the entire job on a page like this one.
The face here is Cormorant Garamond. It is on Google Fonts, it is free, and it has enough weights to build a hierarchy. Swap it in the token block and the personality of the whole site changes — which is the point of putting it there.
Changing it
Two lines in css/theme.css:
--font-display: 'Your Face', Georgia, serif;--font-body: 'Your Other Face', Georgia, serif;
Both stacks fall back to a system serif, so a page still reads properly if the webfont fails to load — which happens more often than most people building sites assume.
Lists read as prose too
- Spacing between items, so a list is scannable rather than a wall
- Markers in the accent colour, quietly
- Nested lists indent without losing their alignment
- Numbered lists get the same treatment
- Useful for steps, where the order carries meaning
- And not used where it does not