"authenticity" - CSS for newspaper, letter .. extracts

[cybmole]

I was reading a novel last night where a newspaper extract appears in the story - quite a common device & was thinking this looks "wrong" - a newspaper would not format its text like this.
..
I think many authors just put all these types of extects into a standard blockquote construction & do not think it though.. e.g.
paper & on line news should be fully justified, handwritten letters should be left justified. paper & on line news use different indents /paragraph spacing rules.

so I wonder what an "authentic" set of CSS rules would look like, for these various sources ?

a button labelled " format this paragraph like a newspaper" is not going to happen as sigil development has ended, but if it did happen - what should it do ?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by cybmole

I was reading a novel last night where a newspaper extract appears in the story - quite a common device & was thinking this looks "wrong" - a newspaper would not format its text like this.
..
I think many authors just put all these types of extects into a standard blockquote construction & do not think it though.. e.g.
paper & on line news should be fully justified, handwritten letters should be left justified. paper & on line news use different indents /paragraph spacing rules.

so I wonder what an "authentic" set of CSS rules would look like, for these various sources ?

a button labelled " format this paragraph like a newspaper" is not going to happen as sigil development has ended, but if it did happen - what should it do ?

LOLOL, Cyb!

You should see what our House CSS sheet looks like. Believe it or not, we have guideline CSS for poems, letters, articles, newspaper clippings, notes...all that crap, for just that reason. Drives me bats to have it, and drives the guys bats, because I try to get them to remove any unused CSS from any book...but yeah, that's how ours looks.

I don't think you can do a "1 size fits all," because you have to take too many things into account. The base font, font size (is it 1em? Larger, smaller?), the kerning of the particular font, in the fontfile...does it lend itself to justification, or just get crammed? If you do an 80% font-size with justification, same question? And for letters; do they look off-balance if they are unjustified? What about if the entire book is not justified, (as we tend not to do, to allow readers to make the choice themselves)? Does that keep the letter from being set off enough?

Typography, digital or otherwise, is an exacting and time-consuming science/art. Trying to set up standardized rules for what X should be, or Y, can't really be done, not efficiently, without also analyzing the type of book (text), the nature of it (romance or action-adventure?), the flow (how many letters per inch, generally, at a base font size?)....too many variables. Just my $.02. Doesn't mean that we don't have internal guidelines, we do...but it's not as simple as it might seem.

Hitch

[cybmole]

wow - I'll settle for the amateur hour version.

within a basic novel, I'd settle for just 3 reasonably convincing styles:

1 layout for a web article extract /online newspaper extract
1 for a printed newspaper extract
1 for a hand written note or letter

what set me off this time was the use of ragged left justified "newspaper extracts" - surely 99% of newspapers have used full justification for years already.

[mrmikel]

Surely this is one of the case of fixed formatting for which an image might be much better than css which can be blown up with a text size key.

But Hitch's typographic details still apply. If it is set in a particular location, you might end up having to track down a newspaper from that location. The other two cases could be anything you like. A handwritten letter might not be left justified, at least if I wrote it, since I would not be trying to use a straightedge to make sure I didn't go over the left margin. I don't think my writing would be always exactly the same either, but I can't say I ever got an A for penmanship.

In our nearly local newspaper, the Register Guard, justification depends on how wide the column is. If it is narrow it is ragged right. As the column gets wider, it is full justified.

[Jellby]

You may want to consider whether you actually want those fragments to be facsimile-like, or simply have some differential formatting that helps the reader know what's happening.

For a handwritten letter, for instance, I, as a reader, do not generally want to see a reproduction of the original (real or fictional), but a properly typeset version. In most books, this is enough (for me):

blockquote {
  margin: 1em 2em;
}

and that applies for the occasional web/online extracts, newspapers and letters.

If a book is a collection of letters, I may remove the side margins and change the font size instead, and special cases may have to be considered if there are letters inside letters or something like that.

[DiapDealer]

As a reader or a formatter of ebooks, I have very little interest in the visual "authenticity" of included excerpts. I just want something visually different that will (at a glance) tell me that "this is not the normal narrative/dialogue" right here. So different margins/font-sizes/font-styles are usually enough for me. The content of the text itself will usually inform me that what follows is from a newspaper or a letter. That's usually sufficient for me. I might change the font-family to monospace so that the reader/app's default monospaced font is used, but that's about the extent of it.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

As a reader or a formatter of ebooks, I have very little interest in the visual "authenticity" of included excerpts. I just want something visually different that will (at a glance) tell me that "this is not the normal narrative/dialogue" right here. So different margins/font-sizes/font-styles are usually enough for me. The content of the text itself will usually inform me that what follows is from a newspaper or a letter. That's usually sufficient for me. I might change the font-family to monospace so that the reader/apps default monospaced font is used, but that's about the extent of it.

That's where I am coming from also, I just want to edit out the jarring experience of a "hand written letter" within the plot line, which is beautifully fully justified, or a " web article" that comes with regular indents instead of block paragraphs. I think publishers are just lazy, sometimes.

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by Jellby

For a handwritten letter, for instance, I, as a reader, do not generally want to see a reproduction of the original (real or fictional), but a properly typeset version.

Absolutely! Dracula was written as a series of letters and other "epistolary" formats such as ship's log entries, in an era when typewriters were only beginning to become common. I am sure that all those Dracula chapters were handwritten, but do we want to read them thus? Not I!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by cybmole

That's where I am coming from also, I just want to edit out the jarring experience of a "hand written letter" within the plot line, which is beautifully fully justified, or a " web article" that comes with regular indents instead of block paragraphs. I think publishers are just lazy, sometimes.

Hand written letters can be indented, but never anything other than Left Justified (LTR). Trully authentic, even those would be a little uneven

I do try and use a script/hanwriting font that renders nice on my PEz. I also consider the times and gender.

I have a rickety Typewriter font for those cases (before Selectric), Ransom note font. Chalkboard font. (gotta love Google Fonts ).

To me Letters, articles and Signs are special cases. They may deserve a display font that is selected with care. Using a MICR font for a computer before the font was even in use by Banks, is just Hollywood wrong (I don't ever remember a terminal that SHOWED that font)

I would never do a whole book in one of these fonts These fonts should ADD to the reading experience, not overwhelm it.

As always where artistic preferences are involved: YMMV

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

As a reader or a formatter of ebooks, I have very little interest in the visual "authenticity" of included excerpts. I just want something visually different that will (at a glance) tell me that "this is not the normal narrative/dialogue" right here. So different margins/font-sizes/font-styles are usually enough for me. The content of the text itself will usually inform me that what follows is from a newspaper or a letter. That's usually sufficient for me. I might change the font-family to monospace so that the reader/apps default monospaced font is used, but that's about the extent of it.

I'm actually with Diap and Cyb on this--as long as I can distinguish it, I'm happy. But we do have clients that get VERY upset if a handwriting font isn't used, etc. Thus, we have all the guidelines, and a list of reliable fonts. {sigh}.

Hitch

[capidamonte]

Here's some CSS I used to use for newspaper clippings:

p.articledateline
	{
	margin-top:1em;
	margin-right:20%;
	margin-bottom:1em;
	margin-left:20%;
	text-indent:0;
	text-align:right;
	page-break-after:avoid;
	font-size:.8em;
	font-family:serif;
	font-style:italic;
	}

p.articletitle
	{
	margin-top:0em;
	margin-right:20%;
	margin-bottom:0em;
	margin-left:20%;
	text-indent:0;
	text-align:center;
	page-break-after:avoid;
	font-size:1.2em;
	font-family:serif;
	font-weight:bold;
	}

p.articlebyline
	{
	margin-top:0em;
	margin-right:20%;
	margin-bottom:1em;
	margin-left:20%;
	text-indent:0;
	text-align:center;
	page-break-after:avoid;
	font-size:.9em;
	font-family:serif;
	font-weight:bold;
	}

p.article
	{
	margin-top:0em;
	margin-right:20%;
	margin-bottom:0;
	margin-left:20%;
	text-indent:.7em;
	text-align:justify;
	font-size:.8em;
	font-family:serif;
	font-weight:bold;
	}

I think the class names are clear enough to explain it.

There are arguments to be made about indenting, etc, but the point was verisimilitude, not pedantry. Main point is to properly classify all the pieces of the book, even down to this level. Later you can make it look however you want.

Aloha.