Desirable text to html ratio?

[Tabas]

I've read that text to html ratio is important. So what is considered an acceptable, and even optimal, ratio?

[tedster]

I doubt there's a hard and fast rule here -- but it's one area where higher is better, and you just can't overdo it.

If you stay away from using tricky stuff just to show off, use external js, external css, and a strict doctype, you'll be able to get some very high text-to-code ratios. I've got some meaty content pages that are probably near 90%, but even on short pages you can get 35% or better.

If you're looking for search engine success, the more an non-techie can read your source code and make sense of it, the better off I think you are.