9. People believe that things that are close together belong together

If two items like text and an image are set too close together the user might believe that those two things are connected.

Since we read things left to right we associate these things like text, images, headings etc as being together based on proximity and might mistake the relation they have to each other.

Proximity

Too+Close (binary/octet-stream)

A good example is this image on the right. The reader might assume the photo belongs to the text on the right because of how close they are to each other. The photo in fact goes with the text below it but this can confuse some readers.   Put more space between items that don’t go together and less space between items that do. This sounds like common sense, but many Web page layouts ignore this idea

Layout