Why wrap @ 80?

[James Knott]

Noah John Gellner wrote:
> Why do we wrap text at 80 columns on TLUG, and elsewhere on the Net for
> that matter? I know that if your mailreader doesn't autowrap it can be
> unpleasant to read, but don't the vast majority of readers wrap? The
> advantage of not wrapping is that fwds, replies, and follow-ups don't
> get funky formatting due to the hard carriage returns. 
> 
> I would be very happy to disable hard wordwrapping on vi.
> 
> Cheers,
> Noah

Well, that would go back to the 80 column IBM punch cards.  The 80 
column "standard" was then applied to printers and terminals.

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