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Far From Being a Utilitarian Afterthought, an Astonishing Number of Design Choices Go Into Pagination (theoutline.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: In his landmark 1931 book An Essay on Typography, the British typographer Eric Gill discusses everything from the proper place for the tail of an 'R' to terminate to which type of word press might best serve the amateur typographer. He casts the printed word as sacred. But there's one thing -- a silent, steady workhorse found in nearly every book -- that Gill fails to address: the lowly page number. The functional role of the page number is simple: it provides order and sequence to a text. And while it is a supremely utilitarian design element, more thought is put into it than you might imagine. Should it go at the top or the bottom of the page? In the right or left margin? Or in the center? These are all conscious and deliberate choices made by designers.
Has anyone found an "The Outline" post on Slashdot that hasn't fallen under
1) Uninformed Gibberish
2) Trolling clickbait
3) Completely boring filler of interest to no one even the topic's core audience
How is this news for nerds again and who cares?
Typography is a pretty nerdy field.
Having authored a number of books (technical/educational) and been deeply involved in page layout and pedagogy, I can tell you that these things are taken VERY seriously. And, yes, our editorial and authoring teams have had holy wars over much less than this.
These issues come to the forefront when books will be re-used by the same person. Something that is educational or used as a reference requires great thought with regards to layout.
Typography and related layout issues are quite an art. I wish there was some simple reference guide. Chicago Manual of Style only goes so far.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Pet peeve: PDF files with displayed page numbers that don't match up with the actual page index.