I've started this thread, because I think long string literals are somewhat special, and may have an easy resolution. According to PEP 8 a good reason to ignore the line-length (or any other) guideline is that "applying the guideline would make the code less readable, even for someone who is used to reading code that follows this PEP." PEP 8 also says "Limit all lines to a maximum of 79 characters." So perhaps it is enough, for long string literals, to add a note to PEP 8: When sensible to do so, lines containing a long string literal can exceed this length. It might also help to add to PEP 8 some Programming Recommendations for Long String Literals. (PEP 8 already has recommendations for Function and Variable Annotations.) Finally, tools such as pep8 and pylint would need some changes, to treat differently lines that contain a long string constant. -- Jonathan