Styling Culture (4)—Margins and Fonts

Click here to read the introduction to the Round and Square series "Styling Culture."
In the next few weeks I will be posting the text for a "volume" that I have been distributing for the last fifteen years. Back in 1997, I handed out a two-page set of instructions that I called "Rob's Style Sheet." I quickly learned that it could be a useful teaching tool, allowing me to describe the practicalities and esoterica surrounding grammar and style in the higher education classroom (and beyond). It also became apparent that it could be a useful tool for writing comments on student papers. Instead of trying to explain in the margins of a paper that s/he was using "number" in problematic ways (we'll get to that), I could write "#19," and have her know exactly what I mean. The most impressive students learned the material very well, and some of them have already gone on to be successful writers—in and beyond academia and the corporate world.

[a] Fonts RF

I will be posting the manuscript that I have provisionally entitled Styling Culture on Round and Square during August and September. As you will quickly see, it is meant to be a grammar book for the anthropologist of American English. It has its prescriptive elements, to be sure (this is all explained in the introduction to the series), but it is meant far more powerfully to be a genuinely useful guide to the culture wars surrounding grammar and usage. In particular, I have great venom for both the annoying critics who always seem to be correcting people and (this is important) for the "good guys" who tell you that it doesn't matter. They're both wrong, and they will hurt you if you listen to them. I'm here to help you, so read on.

4—Margins and Fonts

a. Margins should be Left: 1.5”, Right: 1”, Top: 1”, and Bottom 1”. Reset your margins if they are different from this.

b. By the way, the wider left margin is my personal preference. Style books usually prescribe 1” on all sides, and that should be what you use for any paper unless specifically told otherwise. I am specifically telling you otherwise. I prefer a wider margin for making comments. In case you are interested, universities usually prefer the 1.5” margin as well, but merely for binding doctoral dissertations (most remain unopened, but very well-bound).

c. Pay close attention to these marginal scribbles of mine (they are the reason for 4a/b).     Example:
     ~~~~~      Fuzzy construction: rephrase entire sentence (or paragraph)        
     repunc     Repunctuate, reclarify
     *               Good    
     #               Problems with number (see item 19)
     tense        Problems with tense (see item 20)
     rework      Rework the entire sentence or paragraph
     √               Good point
     |                A good paragraph

d. Use a twelve-point font of your choice (Times, Palatino, Courier) for the body of your paper, including inset quotations.

e. Footnotes and endnotes (see item 5, below), should appear in ten-point font.

f. All text should have an unjustified right margin. Do not even think about “beautifying” your paper with a clean right margin. Let the printers do that when they publish your book. It just doesn’t work in normal word processing. Ever.

g. Check your default settings to make sure that your footnotes, footnote markers, and page numbers are printed in the same font as your text. Your word processing software often has them set to another font (such as New York or Geneva). This creates the kind of “messy” text that anal-retentive professors abhor. Please fix your settings.

***  ***

[b] Margins RF

O.k., this is the ticky-tacky little stuff that still matters. Oh, and matter it does. If you have ever read a memo at your place of work (or a letter sent to you by an organization) with displaced fonts and sloppy margins (too big or too small, just like the Three Bears story), you know what I mean. Just the other day, I opened an e-mail message that seemingly beckoned me to write an article for a new journal. I was just vain enough to feel that they wanted me and my article. All it took was another quick look at the message, though. The name of my paper and the conference at which it was delivered appeared in a larger, bolder font. It was clear that it had been pasted in, and I was just another cog in the little machine that could—get people to send their manuscripts. It was a little like getting a letter full of good news and then realizing that it has been addressed to "Occupant."

I trashed the message.

I wanted to be (really) wanted, but the font told me that I wasn't. The font made it junk mail. If you are a student, similar things might happen to you if you send a sloppy-looking paper to your professor. Far worse things might happen if you are a working person who has been asked for a report or a memo. Bosses don't like slop. The earlier the serious student, lawyer, committee member, or business person learns to create consistently organized and clean texts, the greater will be her success. Sloppy papers give the impression (rightly or wrongly) of sloppy living. Even though it is probably no one's business, it still gets noticed.

Shall I continue? Yes, I think I shall. It is necessary. Well, what do you think of the person with mayonnaise on his tie, or bad shoes, or a persistent, troubling odor? Sloppy margins and fonts are like that. They are the equivalent of blowing your nose in a restaurant in Nagoya (don't do it anywhere in Japan), leaving your chopsticks sticking into the rice in Chengdu, or belching after a meal in Indianola. They are the dishwater left in the sink, the sponge with egg yoke chunks, and the dirt between your toes.

Shall I continue? No, that is more than enough to make the point that margins and fonts matter. Think about them...and wipe your chin before anyone notices.

NEXT
Footnotes and Endnotes (a)
An acerbic diatribe about how MLA and APA citation styles are ruining literature (and why).