Setting the Stage for your Stage

         In Cincinnati, Music Hall is an historic landmark. It is a beautiful building that speaks of glories of times past. Entering its doors is stepping into living history. But it's in a lousy part of town; I rarely went there when I lived in the area. However, when the Aronoff Center—centrally located in a well-lighted and -monitored entertainment district—was built, I found every opportunity to take in live theater and events. And the reason was simple: I was more comfortable in one environment than in the other.

         The same is true for printed works—and I don’t mean that the library has to be in a good part of town. What I mean is that the work needs to be presented in a format and environment that is comfortable to the reader. For many, the only comfortable environment is in paper print, although the e-book has gained prominence in the past decade. Reading from an internet web page is still uncomfortable to some, and the reason has to do with comfort. First of all, it's hard to hold a laptop like a book. There's nothing you, as a writer can do about that. However, you have a wide range of control of the formatting of your piece. Among your most useful and profitable formatting tools are typeset (fonts), whitespace, and page-width ratio.

         I am always surprised when I am the only one in a group of readers or writers who consciously thinks about the font in which a piece of work is presented. The font (or typeset) can be a subconscious way for the writer to communicate style and perspective to the reader. For instance, Times and Bookman are classical fonts with serifs, intended to emulate simplified (but still attractive) pen-and-ink manuscript. This font communicates a traditional story, a familiar genre: romance, fiction, fantasy—something likely to have frills and decoration. Similarly, a non-serif font such as Calibri or Microsoft's new default, Aptos, can convey a more contemporary mood, useful in science-fiction, non-fiction, and instructional—the edges clear, concise, defined. Fixed-width fonts like Courier and Monotype Corsiva are particularly useful (and often used) for portraying displayed text in a story, like a computer screen or a text message. But more than any of the other characteristics of the font, the size is perhaps of utmost importance in creating a comfortable environment. Larger fonts are easier to read; personally, I'm more apt to read a large-print billboard than the fine print of a contract. However, a larger font-size can also convey a lower reading-level. In this case, someone looking for a meaty, thought-provoking article or story might skip past a piece presented in large type. Smaller text, one can interpolate, often implies more difficult reading. While it can seem like a blockade to some readers, this can actually be used a lure to pull in more serious readers to lighter pieces. But comfort is always the watch-word: a one-inch font would be easy to read, but would entail a lot of inconvenient scrolling; a six-point font might indicate phD-level reading, but would only be able to be read with a microscope and a case of eye-strain. Choose the print whose form helps convey your story, and choose a size that will appeal to the audience you desire. Above all, choose a combination that makes reading your words a pleasure, and not a chore.

         Sometimes what isn't said is more important than the words themselves. Well...maybe not more so, but just as important. Whitespace—areas of the page without print—are areas of opportunity some writers fail to exploit. Whitespace allows the eye of the reader to rest, helps pace the cadence of the writing, and communicates ease-of-access to readers. A larger font size is one tool to help produce whitespace. But even more importantly, paragraph spacing provides this necessary rest to the readers' eye. I have skipped many stories and articles because there was no whitespace in them between paragraphs. My mind was instantly overloaded with the idea of trying to read and parse this dense information. It could have been as easy as The Cat in the Hat, but I will never know, because I felt locked out and inconvenienced. On some occasions, when I have been brave enough to navigate the density of non-spaced paragraphs, I have had trouble pacing the story. A word is an image; a sentence is a particular element of a thought; and a paragraph is an entire, complete thought. When we communicate our thoughts vocally, we pause a little after each sentence—our vocal period (or full-stop). But we pause even longer after a thought is complete. The human mind works fast, but even that amazing machine needs to take a breath every now and then. A blank line between paragraphs offers the reader a short rest between ideas as well as visual accessibility. Consider, as you write, mixing the font size and amount of whitespace to make difficult reading look easier and perhaps simpler reading look more sophisticated.

         A sometimes-overlooked issue when reading from a web page is that a computer screen is built like a book on its spine—it's wider than it is tall. That orientation breaks the rule to which we have been long conditioned (pages are taller, not wider), and can make the reading feel awkward. Also, the increase in the width of the screen can cause the reader to lose their place after a line break; I have reread the same line so many times, I often copy-and-paste text into a more comfortable format whose width I can control. Controlling the width of your text (with consideration to the size of your font; larger fonts better support wider pages) is not only considerate of and facilitating for the reader; it can also leave you room on a web page for other objects, like navigation buttons and pictures. If the web page is not your own, as in the case of the popular Writing.com site, using embedded HTML code can allow you to moderate the widths of your margins, effectively offering you the page-width control that you desire.

         Your first few lines will set the stage for your characters or topics, and you will use them wisely— but be just as judicious setting the stage for your stage. Choose well how to display the letters for your words. Be generous with space in which your readers' eyes can rest and ponder what they have taken in. Be clear with the flow of your text from line to line to prevent your own communication from becoming confused. People don't just judge books by the cover: they judge at a glance how difficult the reading will be; how much time it will take; how much time they, as the reader, can invest at the moment; and how long they will be comfortable while reading. It behooves us, then, to take every opportunity to present our writing in an appealing package for our readers. It will do us writers well remember that reading is a physical process—and it starts with deciding whether or not to read at all.