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Scotland's papers: Welby quits and Higher exam 'controversy'

A review of the front page stories from the daily newspapers in Scotland.




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Swinney congratulates Trump after backing Harris in US election

The first minister's endorsement for the Democratic nominee was called "appalling" by Trump's business.




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Strictly contestant's MSP husband saves man's life

Dr Sandesh Gulhane, husband of TV doctor Punam Krishan, gave the man CPR at the Scottish Parliament.




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Court allows secret Zuma confidence vote

But the South African parliament's speaker will decide whether vote will be held in secret.




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Conor McGregor rape accuser 'was very bruised', court told

Nikita Hand claims she was raped by MMA fighter Conor McGregor at a Dublin hotel.




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Residents jumped from balcony to escape flat fire

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Shipwreck confirmed as lost WW1 warship

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The boy conquering Scotland's towering sea stacks

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Murder bid victim felt 'gagged' by parole confidentiality agreement

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Jersey deputy wins award at global conference

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MP calls for 'urgent review' of flight connections

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Trump tariffs would be bad for NI economy, says Murphy

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NI leaders congratulate Trump on US election win

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Condor Ferries rejects contract extension

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Deputy confident in Guernsey-only ferry operator

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Boeing to axe a tenth of its workers as strike continues

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Boohoo considers break-up as sales slide

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Second-home campaigners lose bid for rule review

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Cup hero Ranger signs new Kettering contract

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Other sites considered for nuclear waste disposal

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Waring wins in Abu Dhabi for second career title

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'Now we are candidates' - classy Liverpool take early title control

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Falcons edge past Knights in Premiership Rugby Cup

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'Connected' Blades getting rewards - Wilder

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Contractors appointed to clear Hoads Wood waste

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Robbie Williams to perform at 'iconic' venue

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Kerosene leak continues, sparking pollution fears

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Heather harvesting carried out without consent

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'Cowboy' builder conned woman, 70, out of £60k

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Controversial parking charges to come in next month

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Kingsway residents seek more access roads to reduce congestion

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Story of Sikh soldiers 'needs to be continued'

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Route confirmed ahead of city's Sikh procession

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Bomb survivor tells of facing conspiracy theorist

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Incinerator work to start despite permit concerns

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Jamie Oliver pulls controversial book from sale

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Luton and Sunderland fined for mass confrontation

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Worcester confirm bid to return to professional rugby

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'We remember those caught in conflict today'

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Tax on second homes to fund affordable housing

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House price fall could boost London economy - Khan

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What is the Bibby Stockholm and why is it controversial?

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Blackpool to host Birmingham in FA Cup second round

Former Premier League sides Blackpool and Birmingham City are drawn together in the second round of the FA Cup.




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Lampard confirmed as contender for Coventry job

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Watchdog looks at police conduct in murder case

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The long, promising (and frustrating) history of Microsoft’s consumer file sync services

Live Drive, SDrive, Project M, Folders, FolderShare, Windows Live Sync, Live Mesh, SkyDrive, OneDrive. Yes, Microsoft has been at this file syncing game for a long time. The company bought FolderShare back in November of 2005, and has been …




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Avoiding the conversion cliff-edge: How SLAs support a successful lead handover

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The ultimate guide for using behavioural analytics and A/B testing to optimise website conversions

Content may be king, but data sits behind the throne and has the king’s ear. 

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Use of ch unit considered inappropriate (in certain circumstances)

Update: The title of this post was originally a knowing nod to the considered harmful cliché. I thought it might be amusing and get a bit of attention. However it was brought to my attention by a few people I respect that the title as written might be harmful in itself, so I changed it. However I believe that the subtle point I’m trying to make still stands:

When did we start using the ch unit to specify the maximum length for a line of text? Many places you look nowadays you'll see a variation on:

.prose {
  max-inline-size: 60ch;
}

Is it because of a direct reading of Bringhurst and people (like me) who’ve quoted him:

Anything from 45 to 75 characters is widely regarded as a satisfactory length of line for a single-column page set in a serifed text face in a text size. The 66-character line (counting both letters and spaces) is widely regarded as ideal. For multiple column work, a better average is 40 to 50 characters.

I get it: there’s all that talk of ’characters’. But that’s not what Bringhurst means literally. I’ll come back to that shortly.

Firstly let’s remind ourselves about the CSS ch unit. While ch sounds like it should equate to a number of characters or a character width, that’s not strictly the case. The ch unit specifically refers to the width of the zero ’0’ character within the selected font, or 0.5em if no ’0’ is present. So unless you have a line made up entirely of zeroes, or are using a monospaced font, a width of 66ch will probably not give you a line containing 66 characters. What’s more, the rendered width of that line will vary with the font design, sometimes significantly.

Two text blocks are set to 34 ch wide, but the use of a condensed font (top) and an expanded font (bottom) makes the rendered width narrower and wider respectively.

The important part of Bringhurst’s guideline is not the ’66-characters’ but the ’satisfactory length’. This is about readability, and readability is affected by the length of a line more so than the number of characters in it.

A consistent finding is that long line lengths on screen are least preferred or judged as least easy to read [my emphasis]

With that in mind, restricting your line length using rem would be a far more appropriate unit to use:

.prose {
  max-inline-size: 30rem;
}

This would give you a line length accessibly tied to text size, but independent of font design.

But is using ch harmful?

Bringhurst’s guideline includes this little caveat: a page set in a serifed text face in a text size. This enables him to equate the number of characters in a line with its length. So if you are using a fairly standard typeface for your text then you’ll probably be fine. However that ’standard typeface’ assumption is implicit anytime you use ch to set the width of a column of text. Using rem removes that assumption and gives you what you are probably really after – a consistent, predictable limit on line length.

It didn’t surprise me to find that Eric Meyer had written about this six years ago. I’ll leave you with an important observation from his post:

If you’re working with multiple typefaces, say one for headlines and another for body copy, be careful about setting ch measures and thinking they’ll be equivalent between the two fonts. The odds are very, very high they won’t be.

So is using ch harmful? At the risk of saying it depends, it might not be harmful, but it could be, and there is a far more reliable and appropriate unit to use by way of the rem when it comes to limiting line length in a column of text.

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