Never heard of "outdenting" and now I want to try formatting a fiction document where each paragraph starts with a five or six character outdent, which would expand into the margins (rather than merely indenting every line other than the first one of the paragraph) just as long as I can find a story that fits the typographical experiment.
That was a great retelling of that bit of typographic history. I’m personally visually anti-intent. I think paragraph spacing is better in all cases but each to their own.
Thanks Davin! I think there’s something to be said for that argument. It’s cleaner. But this messy, human history is indents does sort of endear me to them 🙂
Oh yes I love the history and its artifacts. It’s more the places like in the sometimes rigid in-house style guides of some publishers where those artifacts become coded as “proper” that I get itchy.
I’m no fan of neither the “wall of [unbroken] text” nor paragraph indents. The former drags down the read and the latter looks old-fashioned.
The pilcrow does have a handy function in MS Word, should you be forced to use that program. Clicking on it in the ribbon allows you to see all the odd spaces and weird tabbing that others have inserted, not to mention invisible page breaks.
Never heard of "outdenting" and now I want to try formatting a fiction document where each paragraph starts with a five or six character outdent, which would expand into the margins (rather than merely indenting every line other than the first one of the paragraph) just as long as I can find a story that fits the typographical experiment.
I love that idea!
I loved that book, and this is a great reminder - thank you!
That was a great retelling of that bit of typographic history. I’m personally visually anti-intent. I think paragraph spacing is better in all cases but each to their own.
Thanks Davin! I think there’s something to be said for that argument. It’s cleaner. But this messy, human history is indents does sort of endear me to them 🙂
Oh yes I love the history and its artifacts. It’s more the places like in the sometimes rigid in-house style guides of some publishers where those artifacts become coded as “proper” that I get itchy.
I hear that.
I’m no fan of neither the “wall of [unbroken] text” nor paragraph indents. The former drags down the read and the latter looks old-fashioned.
The pilcrow does have a handy function in MS Word, should you be forced to use that program. Clicking on it in the ribbon allows you to see all the odd spaces and weird tabbing that others have inserted, not to mention invisible page breaks.
Follow-up post on the fingerpost?