# Newsprint columns

> A magazine body: a running head on a rule, a wide headline, then the prose packed into two true text columns under it with numbered footnotes gathered on a rule at the foot. Dense where the reading is and airy where it is not. States no colour and no font of its own.

Canonical: https://patternpaste.com/pattern/newsprint-columns.html
Section: Editorial
Access: Included in Pattern Paste access.
Needs: Requires a block theme on WordPress 7.0 to 7.1. Classic themes and page builders are outside our supported setup. Adaptive patterns use the block theme’s colour, spacing and typography presets; styled variations declare their own colours or type.
Blocks: column, columns, group, heading, paragraph, separator
Keywords: editorial, article, newspaper, two columns, footnotes, long-form, dense

Promise: Identical markup in every theme.

---

## The signature moment: airy head, packed body

Density contrast. The top of the section is almost empty: a 14px running head
and a folio number at the two ends of a rule, then a headline at up to 60px
held to 48rem with air around it. Then the body arrives as two 50% columns of
16 to 18px prose on a 1.65 line height with a 3.5rem gutter, and the section
is suddenly dense, the way a page of a broadsheet is dense below its headline.
The footnote strip repeats the head's device at the foot: a wide rule, then two
columns of 14px notes keyed to superscripts in the body.

## How the columns work

The two text columns are one `core/columns` row with two 50% columns, and the
prose is distributed by hand: the left column holds the first two paragraphs,
the right holds the next two. This is not CSS multi-column, which core does not
expose and which would reflow a paragraph across the gutter; each paragraph
lives whole in one column, and the order reads down the left and then down the
right. The band is `66rem`, so each column is a little under 30rem at full
width, which at 17px is 60 to 65 characters: the upper half of the ideal
measure, and well inside the 95-character limit.

The footnotes are a second `core/columns` row with the same two widths and the
same gutter, so the notes align under the body columns.

## What happens at 390

Both rows stack, which is the one layout decision core makes for you below
782px and exactly the right one here: four paragraphs become one column in
reading order, and the two footnotes follow under their rule. The running head
wraps to two short lines. The headline floors at 32px. The superscript markers
in the body are core's `<sup>`, which every theme renders.

## What it inherits from your theme

- **Typeface.** None stated. This is the pattern most changed by a serif
  theme, and it was drawn for that: two columns of Cardo look like a
  newspaper, two columns of Manrope look like a report.
- **Palette.** `base` ground, `contrast` text, two-rung chains. The headline
  carries its colour explicitly.
- **Both rules.** `core/separator` blocks stating no colour.
- **Spacing rhythm.** Core spacing presets.

## What it decides for itself

- **The band**: 66rem. **The gutter**: 3.5rem. **The headline measure**:
  48rem, as a nested left-justified constrained group rather than a
  `padding-right` on the heading.
- **Body proportion**: `clamp(1rem, 1.25vw, 1.125rem)` on 1.65, a step
  smaller and tighter than the single-column editorial patterns because two
  columns want it.
- **Footnotes**: `max(0.875rem, 14px)` on 1.55, numbered in bold.

## What you change first

1. **The running head and folio.** Section name left, number right.
2. **The headline.** Up to about twelve words.
3. **The body.** Two paragraphs per column. To add, copy a paragraph into the
   column that is shorter, so the two columns end near the same line.
4. **The footnotes.** One per column. Remove the `<sup>` markers from the body
   if you remove the notes.

## Contrast

Every pair is `contrast` on `base`. The headline is large text at 3:1; body,
running head and footnotes are held to 4.5:1. Rules carry no text.