Formatting

In the old days, formatting was a big deal. The one-inch margin, double space rule left room for editors, or teachers, to make corrections. The extra space at the top accommodated a clipboard - or paper clips. 

Of course, adhering to the rule on a typewriter often proved a challenge. Going left to right it wasn’t hard to see where the page ended (or began), but judging where that last inch started might involve some guesswork. Later typewriters had a hard stop - a widget that would prevent the roller from moving any further horizontally. The earlier word processors had the same feature - no word-wrap. As long as you didn’t need to sneak in an extra letter or two to finish the word,  you could type merrily along, sliding the return bar at the end of each line. Harder to maintain thought flow - type, type, type, end-of-line, return, type, type, type…

Electronic typewriters introduced automatic line advancement - the word-wrap we’re familiar with thanks to word processors. But you could still get stuck at the end of a line with an unfinished word. And since the typewriter didn’t have a “processor” it couldn’t recognize that you were in the middle of a word. It made for some funky looking stuff, even with an override key.

I remember taking a blank sheet of paper and using a magic marker to mark the edges - thick and black and with an extra quarter inch of warning. I’d put that behind the page I was typing, and the margins became easily visible - if I paid attention to them. (It was not, obviously, an original idea.)

Doing footnotes was still a pain. Footnotes - at the end of the page, not endnotes at the end of the document. How many were going on a particular page? And if there was any text - anything beyond the basic reference - how many lines had to be saved? It made academic more tedious. Details. Nit-picky stuff - and there was plenty of that in the research.

I can’t imagine what the editors and typesetters had to go through, trying to format books, magazines, even newspapers. Nightmare city. No wonder production costs were so high.

Now, of course, formatting’s easy: Select All, Format Menu, enter parameters. Done. Or click the mouse-pointer in the ruler toolbar for a tab. It’s all so automated. And what with blogs, fonts, and variable screen sizes - books aren’t confined to an eight-and-a-half by eleven inch format.

 (The format apparently goes back to the 1600’s. The vatman - the worker who shook the pulp onto the wire, where it would be formed into sheets of paper - could carry a paper mold about the size of four 8.5 by 11 sheets, squared. So the paper maker would make a large sheet, then cut it in quarters)

With ebooks and blogs and variable computers screens (iPod, iPad, Kindle), text - and graphics! - come in a variety of sizes. Format has become flexible. Not irrelevant. Text and panel placement, frames, aesthetics - all this still matters. But we can now format our work any way we like - full screen, larger margins, smaller margins, floating text, animated or hidden graphics, etc.

And we can format ourselves. So much of our life is a process of formatting. What will I wear? How will I get my hair cut? How do I present myself? Do these glasses look good on me? We format ourselves by what we wear, what we say, how we move, what words we use, what gestures we make - even how we stand or how we’re silent. (Rhetoricians call this decorum - how we present ourselves is part of how we argue, or persuade others. Check out figarospeech.com for more on a rhetorical perspective to all this.)

But do we format ourselves inside-out or outside-in? That is, do we put on a new suit and feel confident - not temporarily, but do we become inherently confident? Or do we put on a new suit because we’re inherently confident? I will wear this. I will stand thus.

The answer is probably both. After all, formatting is a response to outside contingencies - remember how we got to 8.5 by 11 or one inch margins. Formatting standardizes, gives us a common structure, a common framework. Formatting (decorum) is a first language for communicating. 

But we also format ourselves morally. Moral formatting involves more than not stealing and being honest - though that’s the starting point. It involves more than being charitable and compassionate - though those are pre-requisites as well. Moral formatting even involves more than being cognizant of another’s humanity - the inherent dignity every one deserves. (An example: adults expect children to show respect; how much respect do adults show children? Obviously (?) there’s respect, and there’s respect. Too often, though, adults confuse authority with respect.)

While moral formatting requires us to conform to all the above, it also requires us to continually re-format ourselves. It’s the age of the computer and word-processor, after all. Moral formatting is the process of constant self and re-evaluation. And appearances do inform content. 

Change my font and margins and I not only look different. I am different.