[jgrahamc]

One of the nice things about Ceefax was that it managed to combine instant and delayed gratification. You knew you could get certain information by punching in the page number but at the same time you had to wait a short while for it to appear as the pages (and sub-pages) were transmitted in a certain order. I think it was this combination of access to information and a small price to pay in getting it that made it so addictive.

And the limited screen real-estate meant that the writing had to be short, simple and clear. The screen format was 24 x 40 and once headers and footers are taking into account a typical story might have 17 x 40 = 680 characters. Assuming an average English word length of 5 characters that's roughly 110 words. Add in blank lines for paragraph breaks and the format is very constrained.