asking for guidance on length of line in terminal

Greetings!

A couple of sighted friends (one at my request) told me that my text 
terminal has part of the line cut off.  One said it was at the beginning.

Using "stty -a", I learned that my text console has sixty-five lines and 
that the lines are one hundred and seventy-five columns.  I'm virtually 
certain those are the settings from installing; I'm using Debian Jesse. 
  When I ran "stty sane", the settings stayed the same.

In gnome-terminal, "stty -a" told me the terminal has a wimpy 
twenty-four lines and eighty columns.  I note that I haven't yet asked 
anybody to look at the screen in gnome-terminal.

I'd like to have a high number of lines, though I also haven't checked 
if those looked like a problem in my text console.  I'd also like lines 
longer than eighty characters, but want to know the longest line people 
think I can have that shows up completely on the screen.  I've never had 
a problem reading these long lines with Speakup, but from time to time I 
may need somebody to look at my stuff on the screen.  Also, if I ever 
share program code or anything else with sighted folks, I want it to 
look right.  Any suggestions?

Also, if somehow I'm looking at the problem the wrong way, feel free to 
let me know if you think there's something else I should do.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Al