Layout question

[nancylebov]

I've got a commission to letter a five-verse poem. In the interests of making it easy to frame the piece, it'd be better not to do the verses as one long column.

Do you think it would be easier to read with the verses in this order

1 2
3 4
5

or

1 3
2 4
5

?

Comments

[nwhyte]

There's no way people will read

1 3
2 4
5

correctly.

You might have a chance though with

1|3
2|4
 5

but not without some visible separator between the columns.

The other possibility is

1 4
2 5
3

if you can't centre the bottom cell. But even that is fraught with difficulty.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks. My intention in the post was to have spaces between the collomns and the 5s centered, but lj helpfully takes out my white spaces.

My notion is to use ornamentation to force reading with dividers/ornamentation as you suggest or with

1 2
___

3 4

___

5


but I'm still curious about whether there's a preference.

[nwhyte]

You can put in whitespaces (though not very well) by writing   - otherwise whitespaces at the start of a line, or in sequences of more than one, are stripped out.

I have to say my gut feeling would be for

12
34
5

but it depends on the poem.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

This is the one I would have suggested.

[suecochran.livejournal.com]

I would have a preference for this one.

[redbird]

If those are the choices, definitely the first.

I might consider

1 4
2 5
3

but if I have columns that begin

1
2

I'm going to expect to keep reading down to the bottom, as if it were a two-column magazine layout.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

How about setting lines 2 and a little below 1 and 3 (respectively), but not a full line down; this would create something of a vertical flowdown without using the full space.

Put more concretely, something like this:

111111111
111111111
111111111....2222222222
111111111....2222222222
..................2222222222
..................2222222222

333333333
333333333
333333333....4444444444
333333333....4444444444
..................4444444444
..................4444444444

555555555
555555555
555555555
555555555

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Aaaak. Didn't quite get the offsets for the second halves of the even numbered lines right - but I think the idea is clear...

[cellio]

That's what I thought of too.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

I've only seen two-column poems a couple times (mostly from papersky), and no matter how many times I read them through, I've never been able to figure out what the correct order is. But I'm not a poetry person.

If I was doing it, I'd probably just delete the line breaks after each odd-numbered line. Or maybe do this:

_1111_______
_1111_______
_1111_______
_1111__2222_
_______2222_
_______2222_
_3333__2222_
_3333_______
_3333_______
_3333__4444_
_______4444_
_______4444_
_5555__4444_
_5555_______
_5555_______
_5555_______

[zenlizard]

1...2
3...4
..5

Is probably the best. Take a look at a comic book page with a five-panel layout: chances are, it's as outlined that way. If it isn't, it almost certainly has arrows explicitly stating where one goes from here.

And this is the third or fourth time I've tried to post this reply. Grrrrr...

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks, and the periods are a handy solution to the whitespace problem.

[(Anonymous)]

I'll vote for:

1 | 4
2 | 5
3


- Captain Button

[nitebytes.livejournal.com]

There's no way in hell that anyone will read
1 3
2 4
5
Correctly without extra fuidance (arrows or something)

Perhaps something like?

1 | 3
2 | 4
  | 5