It’s always amazed me that column-number-mode isn’t turned on by default in Emacs. Generally the first thing I do when I plan to do any serious editing is turn it on. While perhaps not the most sophisticated tool for monitoring line length, it’s a simple, unobtrusive solution to the problem.

I plan to investigate fancier solutions in the future. I’d like to see an unobtrusive line marker, and perhaps a line highlight when my cursor is on the line. A “long lines” report would also be nice. For right now, column-number-mode does the job.

https://github.com/artlogic/.emacs.d/commit/cf5ae468ce7f4586e50f6c87e9210156316a6cfd