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You can improve legibility and reading fluency by applying the standards of textual presentation. Font sizes should never be less than 16px, which is roughly 12pt printed. Line height should be the same value, give or take 1-2px/10-20% depending on the font. Line lengths should also be between 60 and 80 characters, for blocks of text. Increasing the contrast between the text and the background also helps visitors, but be careful of making it too stark. Black on White and vice versa cause us more strain than off-white on very dark grey.
As for the layout, have you considered the Golden Ratio? It's a design principle of proportions: 1.618 (3 s.f.). For example, a site width of 960px would have one column of 593px and 367px. The wider would contain the main content, whilst the narrower would contain excerpts, navigation, graphics, etc. Alternatively, the rule of thirds can provide you with the four most important points on your design.
The average Internet user is most likely to associate an underline with a hyperlink. Therefore, your headers could benefit from a different styling to differentiate them from any links in your texts.
Plugging W3C Validation into your footer is an old trend that happily died. The truth is that if your mark-up is not syntactically valid by now, it's not likely to be displayed properly. It's useful for checking for yourself, especially if you're starting out.
Good luck with your future in the online industry.
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