The Modern Web

Multi-columns

With their roots in scientific document markup, websites have followed a pretty straightforward pattern when it comes to text: everything is based on a single, unbroken column, like a document in a word processor or text editor. This characteristic is largely because of the Web’s dynamic nature, with variable font sizes and numbers of characters making it hard to control positioning precisely. Print, with its fixable letter sizes and known character count, allows for much greater flexibility in how text is laid out on the page.

Pick up just about any printed magazine or newspaper (younger readers: ask your parents what those are) and you’re bound to find examples of text being flowed into multiple columns—often two, sometimes three ...