The time is coming when a book page will be planned to harmonize with and express the literary motive; to promote ease and pleasure in reading; and to satisfy the innate sense of artistic harmony which is felt and appreciated by the cultivated reader, even if, as must often be the fact, he is quite unconscious of the existence of such a demand.
It is upon a basis somewhat like this that books should be planned: Make one page that meets the requirements of art and of the literary motive, and base the book upon it. Such is not the general custom. It is more the fashion to fix the size of the book and accommodate the page to the arbitrary scheme, forcing the type and the format to adequate proportions. There are books that are artistically ruined by the use of type of an inharmonious face, or that may be one size too small or too large; there are many books that are, typographically, abortions, because of neglect to conform to certain very simple tenets of art, when they might as easily have been exemplars of artistic motives and a comfort and delight to each cultivated reader.
It is doubtless because these neglected essentials are so simple and so easily incorporated that it is so difficult to obtain recognition and currency for them. But we may rejoice that books are beginning to receive some of this kind of attention, even in the big printing factories, where books are made very much as barrels of flour are turned out of the great northwestern mills, or as bags of grain are discharged from the modern reapers marching in clattering procession over the horizon-wide wheat townships.
Proportion and the Format
It is a delicate and essential matter to fix upon the length of the type page, and a difficult question to fix the margins. There is a mass of literature bearing upon these matters, but they cannot in every case be decided according to arbitrary rules. It is usually safe to be guided by the usual rules in proportioning a page of type, and in placing the page upon the paper. A thorough understanding of the principles of art as they may be applied to printing will suggest occasional infractions of mechanical rules in the interests of good art. Exactly what is to be the procedure in every instance cannot be formulated into rules, but it is always possible to explain justifiable infractions of rules by reference to principles of art. When it is found impossible to thus justify departures from rule, precedent or convention, it is evident that art would have gained if the rules had been adhered to.
The treatment of the format of a book has become somewhat of a moot question, though it is evident that the advocates of the strictly conventional method are gradually drawing practical printers into agreement with them, and that their opponents rely upon the spirit of philistinism for their chief justification, confining their arguments largely to contradiction unfortified by either logic or precedent. Philistinism is not entirely evil, but the present is not a time of such slavish conformity as to clothe it with the appearance of a virtue. Protest is the instinctive spirit of today. In printing there is too much of it. We need more conformity, if conformity be interpreted not to mean blind adherence to precedent but a large and active faith in the saving virtue of demonstrable principles.
Proportion, balance, in a limited sense composition as understood in art, and optics must be considered in adjusting the format of a book. The size and shape of the book must determine the exact dimensions of the page and the margins. The leaf of the ordinary book which is generally approved is fifty per cent longer than it is wide. This proportion is often varied, and for different reasons, but it may be accepted as a standard.