2009-08-27

Question

Why are TVs and computer monitors horizontally long, but paper is vertically long? I suppose it makes sense that monitors and TVs are horizontal, as this matches our visual field, but then why is paper tall, rather than wide?

3 comments:

alison said...

Because people are way better at reading narrower things (up to a point)? (No, I can't be bothered to find a citation for that, but I'm pretty sure I've seen studies on it before.)

oogRobot said...

But are people better at reading narrow things because they've always read narrow things? And why are people better at reading things?

Liz! said...

I vote it's because writing shorter lines are easier to keep straight (and therefore looks better).