---
title: "Cool Tip: Show a vertical rule after 80 chars in VS.NET"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/8/18/cool-tip-show-a-vertical-rule-after-80-chars-in-vsnet.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/8/18/cool-tip-show-a-vertical-rule-after-80-chars-in-vsnet.html"
published: "2005-08-18T00:47:00"
updated: "2005-08-18T00:47:00"
tags: [".Net Quotations", "Tips & Tricks"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "I have no idea why this is not actually an editor option built in, but still, nice to know it's *possible*. I got this nice tip from a guy named Herfried K. Wagner (MVP) \"Once upon a time I asked if it was possible to…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Cool Tip: Show a vertical rule after 80 chars in VS.NET

By Roy Osherove August 18, 2005 In [.Net Quotations](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-quotations), [Tips & Tricks](https://osherove.com/blog/category/tips-tricks)

**Historical article** · Originally published August 18, 2005; technical details may be outdated.

I have no idea why this is not actually an editor option built in, but still, nice to know it's \*possible\*.

I got this nice tip from a guy named Herfried K. Wagner (MVP)

"Once upon a time I asked if it was possible to display a vertical rule after 80 characters in the IDE's text editor.  Today I read the following suggestion in one of the public groups:

_**Note: Before touching your registry, make sure to back it up. Use this at your own risk!**_

Start RegEdit and open the following key:

'HKEY\_CURRENT\_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\VisualStudio\\7.1\\Text Editor'

Create a new string named "Guides" and assign the value "RGB(128,0,0) 80".
This will display a vertical rule after 80 characters.  It's even possible to create more than one rule, for example "RGB(128,0,0) 95, 100".

This seems to work fine with VS 2003 and 2005 Beta 2!

## More in .Net Quotations

[All posts in .Net Quotations](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-quotations)

- Oct 30, 2005

    ### [Automating the reinvention of the wheel](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/10/30/automating-the-reinvention-of-the-wheel.html)

- Oct 30, 2005

    ### [Strongly Typed Reflection Calls in .NET 2.0](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/10/30/strongly-typed-reflection-calls-in-net-20.html)

- Aug 15, 2005

    ### [Two interesting Israeli .NET related blogs](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/8/15/two-interesting-israeli-net-related-blogs.html)

- Aug 9, 2005

    ### [Small Domain Specific Language for the GoF Design patterns](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/8/9/small-domain-specific-language-for-the-gof-design-patterns.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

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### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/