What is line length limit in an email body?
The RFC 5322 standard recommends that lines be no longer than seventy eight characters for readability. It also requires that lines must not exceed nine hundred ninety eight characters. Lines that are too long may be folded or rejected.
The seventy eight character guideline exists because early terminals displayed eighty columns, leaving room for the newline sequence or a quote marker. The nine hundred ninety eight character limit is a strict maximum.
If a line grows longer, servers may fold it or consider it malformed. It is like trying to stretch a sail beyond the width of the mast.
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