Styling Culture (10)—Page Numbers

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] Numerology RF

I will be posting the manuscript that I have provisionally entitled Styling Culture on Round and Square during the autumn and into the winter. 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.

10. Page Numbers

          a. Number all pages other than the first page.

          b. Do not turn in a paper without page numbers.

          c. If you do not know how to create page numbers, or how to get rid 
             of “page one” numbers, ask me (or a classmate who knows the procedure) 
             to show you.

          d. Yes, suppress page one, even on a two-page paper. 

          e. Yes, include page numbers (after the first page), even on a two-page paper.

          e. Put ‘em anywhere you want ‘em (as long as they are not distracting).

*** ***

Page numbers? Huh? But who cares?, I hear you cry. Well, I do. But why would page numbers deserve an entry all their own in a style guide that deals with the big mazumbos of American English grammar—weighty matters ranging from split infinitives to confusions of tense?

Have you ever had to read and comment on hundreds—nay, thousands—of pages of writing that lacks even the basic decency of page numbers? Some of you surely have (I shall call you "teacher"), and it is very likely that you are not questioning my intransigence. Those of you who have not had that experience (repeated week-after-week and semester-after-semester), might not realize how important those little numbers can be.

[b] Loose RF

Let's start with the obvious. You have printed your paper at the library, and rush over to my office to put it in the slot outside my door before the 5:00 p.m. bell sounds on a lovely autumn (Friday) afternoon. You begin to slip the papers in the door-folder when you realize that there are a bunch of other papers already in there. It is just then that you realize that you forgot to staple your pages together. No one has a stapler, and you don't intend to retrace your steps to the library. You pound on neighboring office doors. Nope. You look to the heavens, and are given a solution. In an act worthy of the term bricolage, you fold and twist the corners of the pages into a little knot that looks a bit like a spitball adhering to the corner of your assignment. You shrug, stuff the package in the door, and get on with your weekend.

A while later, I swing by my office, pick up the papers, and put them in my special "weekly assignment" folder for grading. Later that evening, I notice that pages are missing (and that there is a peculiar looking "spitball" twist on the corners. Well, this is easily remedied. All I have to do is gather the loose sheets, put them in order, and use my trusty stapler to get things back on-track.

Except there are no page numbers.

This is maddening, and it is not only moi who feels this way. Ask literary agents or publishers what kinds of things annoy them, and this is near the top of the list (right up there with pushy and insecure authors). And don't for a moment think that the happy trend toward electronic submissions (for classes or publication) changes the need for page numbers. If anything, it makes them even more important.

But there is one last thing, and I sense that you are about to ask it. What about the Kindle®, the Nook®, and other electronic readers? They don't have page numbers, do they? They have little percentage markers. Well, I don't know what the future holds, but—much as I love my Kindle®—the lack of page numbers drives me crazy. We'll see if I adjust to that, but until you submit papers via "Whispernet" to my Kindle®, just put in page numbers.

And don't forget the stapler.

NEXT
Paragraph Breaks
We'll take a look at another seemingly minor issue in essay and thesis writing. Those little respites between thoughts? They matter, as I'll explain.