Subject: open spaces
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Fri Jan 26 2001 - 05:26:47 GMT
I feel just as strongly about the white spaces in
& around writing.
Do the great style manuals say anything about
the matter? People talk so much - & quite rightly
- about 'ear' but I can't say I ever heard much about
the need for an 'eye'. Yet it seems to me that the actual
length of the lines within the frame of the page,
the way they cluster together, the deliberate breaking
of any monotony in the pattern of expository paragraphs
as they alternate with lines of dialogue, & so on -
all contribute very powerfully to the way the reader
takes in the actual content (indeed, whether he takes it in
at all.)
And if you all care so much about it, why does no one -
EXCEPT ME - make any attempt to shape their e-mails?
There's only one other guy I've ever come across (& he
on the Austen list) who - in sure & certain emulation
of myself - indents his stuff with the courtesy & fastidiousness
of a proper writer. You open his stuff & are at once
drawn into it with a lightened & expectant heart.
As opposed to the sinking spirits induced by the average
presentation: no margins, no capitalisations, no paragraphs,
just one endless anaconda of undifferentiated words.
Scottie B.
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