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emailword-wrap

Do you use word wrapping within emails?

I'm wondering if word wrapping should be applied in text emails? And what about HTML emails? If so, what character would you normally wrap at?

Solution

  • RFC 2646 says:

    The Text/Plain media type is the lowest common denominator of Internet email, with lines of no more than 997 characters (by convention usually no more than 80)

    Another popular standard is to wrap at 72 characters. This dates back to many console applications (like EDIT and many BBS interfaces) that displayed text within an ASCII "window" including a border and scrollbar, allowing slightly less than 80 characters to be displayed.