Write On! :: Comments :: Visual Design in Prose

An insightful article, to say the least. Coming from a design background, the "squint" you write of is a very familiar tool for me. I suppose I've been applying it to my writing as well, but just never realized I was doing it -- I typically blame my squinting on too much booze, not enough sleep, and the relentless creep of years -- but it does work.

I've found that the "squint" works very well with poetry (which is what I've been focusing on for the past year or so, hence my lack of posts here for a while). Excluding "shape" poems (which don't require a "squint" to see their stupidity), I find that a good "squint" is useful to make sure stanzas and lines are balanced and flow properly. I've also found that as you "zoom in" on the details (lines and words), you'll see whether you've grouped too many similar length words/lines together, or broken a nicely flowing group with a word that's too short or too long (or if a longer/shorter word would make things more interesting).

Anyway, a very good article. Glad I popped in for a visit.

...out of the equation if you're used to applying it somewhere else. This is why, I think, my writing tends to take on different tones depending on what typeface is being displayed -- I'm malleable like putty when it comes to visual cues.

I'm from a small, unknown country in the north called Ca-na-da. We are a simple, grease-loving people who enjoy le weekend de ski.
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just the visual training, of which I have none. But I am the same way about the look of the thing. It is probably why I preview so obsessively, to compare the text in the box vs. the way it will appear after "Submit", and the different qualities of each.

It may have something to do with the way I habitually begin my opening sentence in the subject line and continue it in the comment body, an extended pause

inserted in an unlikely place for no apparent reason except, perhaps, to add a semblance of suspense. It is a horribly hackneyed trick.

Squinting at your own article above, I notice that the paragraph is not the only unit that stands out. On a larger scale than that there are the sections, each with its own bold header. And on the smallest scale, the single-sentence paragraph, a miniature billboard bearing a simple slogan. You can read these short paragraphs scattered through the prose like a Burma Shave campaign:

I'd like to try something a little unorthodox here.
[I]t's as literal as words on paper.
Listen, and I'll explain how it works.
I have no rules for you, but I do have clues.
In writing, the negative space is the paper itself.
...Breathing and drama expressed via the paper between the typographical marks.
Squinting doesn't lie.

My apologies if this seems like a heartlessly analytical way to read your piece.

--ich sage nicht, was ich will, sondern was die Sprache will--
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