I've never heard about a convention to adjust the space between columns in a writing, it seems it depends on aesthetic sense–even in scientific literature—doesn't it?
[Tex/LaTex] rule of thumb to set the space between columns
spacingtwo-columntypography
Best Answer
Quoting Felici, The complete manual of typography, p. 128:
On p. 129, Felici shows an example of justified text columns with too wide gutters and notes "If the text were set ragged right, the effect would be even worse, as ragged margins make gutters seem wider."
In my opinion, the "optimum" column width is about 1.5em to 2em, and the value of
\columnsep
in the standard classes (10pt) is so small as to affect readability.Note: The following examples use the default font size of
10pt
. As the standard classes don't enlarge the value of\columnsep
for the11pt
and12pt
sizes, their readability is affected even worse.