How many times have you heard that particular statement?
An extremely overused one these days.
It’s usually tossed into any conversation that might merit a certain individual, situation or business where things are not quite as they seem.
Cue the lowering of eyebrows and a sotto voce whisper about the case in hand.
‘Never judge a book by its cover’.
Pure theatre. And usually ill deserved, whoever the target might be.
When the statement applies to books however, well, that’s another thing.
Because my belief is that you should always judge a book by its cover.
Short of buying it, how else are you meant to make any kind of judgement about it and the content therein?
The proof, and oh dear, here comes another hoary old cliché, is very much in the pudding.
Next time you are in any kind of bookshop (and lucky you, wish I was there as well, rather than stuck behind this keyboard), take a look at the people who are perusing the shelves with you.
Their eyes will be working the line until, with a flicker of interest, they pick a book up and start to look through it.
The first thing they do? More often than not, it’ll be to quickly flip through the pages, from beginning to end, a process that only takes a few seconds and which, to most watching eyes, serves no discernible purpose whatsoever.
But you can tell a lot about a book from that initial flip through the pages.
Does it include photographs or illustrations?
Is the paper it’s been printed on glossy or matt?
How ‘reader friendly’ is it? In other words, what font has been used? And are all the paragraphs justified or have been left to do their own thing?
More to the point, if they have been justified, has that come at a cost of that desperately annoying trait of hyphenating a word unnecessarily in order to do so?
Because I don't think it's at all satisfactory when that happens-it's unprofessional, lazy and thorou-
ghly slapdash.
(see what I did there?)
Plus, crucially, has the writer, or, more usually, the publisher or printer ensured that there is enough white space on the page?
Any of my clients who happen to be reading this will be very familiar with that mantra of mine.
White space.
It’s all about the readability of the book.
Because, for me, what is not printed on the page is just as important as what is printed on the page.
Which means plenty of short paragraphs, even a few that might consist of just three or four lines or even just the one line.
With plenty of reassuring white space on the page between them.
Friendly pages that invite you to read them rather than intimidating ones that look like, at first glance, a solid block of unyielding ink.
It’s like going out for a meal.
If your plate arrives at your table groaning under the sheer volume of food that has been placed on it, an unyielding pile of steaming fare that looks in danger of spilling over the edge, what’s your first reaction?
“I’ll never eat all that”. And you rarely do, your enjoyment of the occasion spoilt by food overkill.
If, on the other hand, the food is tastefully presented and with gaps in it that allow you to see the colour of the plate, then all is good, a well presented meal that looks as good as it tastes.
The pages of a book are exactly the same.
Overfill them and the inclination to want to read is diminished.
Create them so they are appealing visually and the words are so much more easily digestible.
Take this blog for example – it is, less the title, 724 words long.
And divided into, including these two lines, a total of 37 mini paragraphs, the biggest of which are just three lines in length.
If I’d compacted it all together you’d have been confronted with one solid piece of text that was in or around 58-60 lines long, a large and unyielding paragraph that that would have looked as indigestible as that overloaded plate of food.
And as unreadable as your vittles were uneatable.
White space. The art of what isn’t on the page.
Helping to make the art of reading even more enjoyable.
