Re: [Groff] Re: UTP paragraph spacing

[Steve Izma]

On Wed, Jul 17, 2002 at 11:48:20AM -0700, Meg McRoberts wrote:
> Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 11:48:20 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Meg McRoberts <address@hidden>
> Subject: Re: [Groff] Re: UTP paragraph spacing
> To: Steve Izma <address@hidden>, address@hidden
> In-Reply-To: <address@hidden>
> 
> 
> --- Steve Izma <address@hidden> wrote:
>  
> > A paragraph plus whitespace is deemed by almost all publishers
> > with style guidelines to be unnecessary. In some respect it's
> > ambiguous: does it represent a "greater" separation of thought
> > than a normal paragraph? Don't forget that most readers are used
> > to reading paragraphs without extra separation and they bring
> > such assumptions with them to everything they read.
> 
> Yes, this is the traditional standard, I agree, and it works well
> for books that are mostly running text broken into paragraphs.
> But it seems to me that the technical community is using the block
> paragraphs more often -- I just grabbed a couple O'Reilly books to
> confirm that, the Linux/UNIX manpages and most of the standard
> Linux documentation are using the block paragraphs.
> 
> At issue is how visually jagged the right margin of text is on the
> page.  The indented "example" text is not as visually distinct on
> a page where the paragraphs are also indented.
>  
> > If you feel like the paragraphs look too crowded, then I suggest
> > you probably prefer more leading to lighten up the page, so we
> > should add more space between the lines.
> 
> I actually like very heavy pages of text personally -- the white space
> is not the issue.  But when the page includes a lot of indented example
> material (our .Ps) that has a space preceding it, it seems good if the
> paragraphs also have the space.
> 
> meg

Meg,

Thanks for the reply. Even though I've been a typographer for 30
years, I'm thoroughly re-scrutinzing my ideas in this field these
days, largely through the influence of a couple of books on
typography and printing written or edited by Robert Bringhurst. I
highly recommend them ("A Short History of the Printed Word"
[co-authored by Bringhurst] and "The Elements of Typographic
Style"); they are useful even if you just peruse them.
Bringhurt's background is as a poet and an anthropologist, so he
brings a broad aesthetic to typography.

The O'Reilly books, which I generally like (although mostly for
their content and organization), prove my point it seems to me:
when a paragraph ends a page, you need to think twice at the top
of the next page as to whether you are about to read a
continuation of the previous thought or whether you should pause
and digest the previous paragraph.

Bringhurst talks about the rhythm of the page: eveness and
consistency of lines produces a rhythm that allows one to
concentrate on the content and know about its continuity.
Vertical whitespace is a signal of interruption and I think should
only be used as a sign for the reader to pause substantially, as
in new sections, or around examples. Indented blocks or examples
should have a different amount of indent than paragraphs in order
to avoid ambiguity.

I think that within the technical sphere, people are just used to
using terminals where the clearest paragraph break is an extra
hard return (like I am here). And page breaks don't really occur
on the screen. Also, computer-oriented people tend to dump stuff
out onto letter-sized sheets in one column, producing long lines
(usually around six inches) that are very awkward to read,
and an extra line space between paragraphs comes as a relief.

But in designing the typography for a book, I think we should be
more concerned with these details. After all, even though I spend
a good deal of my life getting used to the style of technical
publications, the vast majority of my reading consists of
published material that has more conventional and well-worked-out
typographical styles. I think this is likely true of most of us.

        -- Steve
-- 
Steve Izma,                               (519) 884-0710 ext. 6125
    Wilfrid Laurier University Press      FAX: (519) 725-1399
    Waterloo, Ont., Canada N2L 3C5        address@hidden