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Old 09-29-2009, 04:22 PM   #26
ahi
Wizard
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck View Post
That too, but that's not it.

If there's a back-and-forth dialogue of eight short lines of text, I'd prefer not to have four of them on one page and four on the next. This isn't a widow/orphan problem; it's a limitation of pages. I'd certainly prefer not to have one line at the bottom of a page, and the next seven lines on the next page--and while typesetting could fix that, it could only do so by having more empty space on the page; there are limits to how much variation in content amount a page should have. (Throw one line to next page: easy; fix the leading a bit. Throw four lines to next page? Erm, now the page is going to look substantially empty.)

If there's a 300-word paragraph, I'd prefer it all be on a single page, not half on one page and half on the next. Especially if it's a paragraph of some complexity that I'll want to pause and absorb, as in detailed nonfiction writing.

Scrolling lets me keep like content together much more than page breaks do.
Hmmm... now that is very interesting. The most compelling argument I've read for unpaged scrolling text to date.

If I were a rich man, I'd commission a study on the subject.

- Ahi
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