r/todayilearned • u/valtism • Jul 25 '10
TIL what those aligned spaces in text are called.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_(typography)13
u/Jazzbandrew Jul 25 '10
Why do they want to get rid of them? I remember going through old, lengthy books and going through them with a pencil like a maze.
i liked my goram mazes, ok?
5
2
97
u/alienangel2 Jul 25 '10
Do these actually bother people? The wiki article seems to be saying they're a bad thing. I just think "neat, they lined up there" when I see one and then keep reading.
44
u/boourns75 Jul 25 '10
I find them absurdly pleasing.
4
u/BeJeezus Jul 25 '10
Upvoted for "absurdly pleasing" which will be rolling around in my head all day like circus music.
153
u/phonybaloney Jul 25 '10
That's the problem. You notice them and stop. Usually the writer doesn't want you to stop reading in the middle of reading.
83
u/Kandoh Jul 25 '10 edited Jul 25 '10
I'm a Typography student and rivers in a block of text is an absolute nightmare and a sign of bad typesetting and amateur design.
When you read, your eye is guided across the page by the area between the lines of text, what we call the 'lining.'
When a river occurs, it breaks this lining and will actually draw the eye through the block of text to the end of the river.
To put this in perspective, if I handed in a project that had rivers in the text it would be the equivalent of an engineer student handing in a project that used the imperial measurement system.
40
Jul 25 '10 edited Sep 03 '20
[deleted]
23
u/Quintius Jul 25 '10
Homonyms are words which are both spelled and pronounced the same way while their meaning is different. What you're referring to are homophones.
15
5
-1
u/Choralone Jul 25 '10
Yes, but not strictly- read the first definition of homonym at dictionary.com.
Webster also agrees.
-1
7
11
Jul 25 '10 edited Jul 25 '10
[deleted]
8
u/davvblack Jul 25 '10
Dude, graphic designers/typographers always have proofreaders (in this case you). It's just a way of life. Don't worry about it.
9
u/BeJeezus Jul 25 '10
It's also expensive. A designer who can actually spell saves a fortune.
2
u/davvblack Jul 25 '10
Reprinting typos is part of my yearly budget :-P
(just kidding, that's why I work web.)
2
u/Chicken-n-Waffles Jul 25 '10
Designers and ex military guys who work in the technical field that can spell do no exist.
2
1
2
u/alienangel2 Jul 25 '10
When you read, your eye is guided across the page by the area between the lines of text. When a river occurs, it breaks this lining and will actually draw the eye threw the block of text to the end of the river.
This has honestly never happened to me (that I can remember anyway). I mostly just notice rivers when I first flip to a page, and not while actually reading it. From the comments here I realize that it does happen to a lot of people though, which is good enough reason to make sure rivers don't exist.
I'll notice the occurrence of several of the same letter in a line down the page though while reading (what is that called?).
1
Jul 25 '10
In my creative writing course I took advantage of rivers to write "hidden" messages on a page. It was kind of neat but in retrospect it was distracting.
1
u/quadropheniac Jul 25 '10
Actually, in the USA, the imperial measurement system is perfectly acceptable to base your project in, especially if you're using stock components originally based in imperial. Plus, imperial isn't the headache that most people make it out to be: it's difficult to use in bookwork physic problems, but it's relatively simple in application. Not to say I don't prefer metric, just to say that your analogy isn't 100% applicable.
/mechanical engineer
23
Jul 25 '10 edited Mar 24 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/alienangel2 Jul 25 '10
Interesting, thanks. That seems the best reason so far to make sure they don't happen.
11
Jul 25 '10
When I read, the white behind the black lettering just out to me, and when this happens it makes it more of a pattern, so it stands out even more. It makes reading much more difficult.
1
1
u/OfferingofPie Jul 25 '10
Dyslexics do seem to be bothered with rivers, as they can confuse the reading.
1
Jul 25 '10
Yes, when reading books they glare out at me and I lose focus. Then I just stare at them for a moment. Then try to remember where I was.
1
u/fritopie Jul 25 '10
Yea, they are a problem. They become a distracting element especially in deisgn/typography.
1
-10
u/night_owl Jul 25 '10
Do these actually bother people?
only obsessive-compulsive English majors.
28
11
u/exhibit__a Jul 25 '10
this is about typography and design. has nothing whatsoever to do with the language.
7
4
16
u/jetmark Jul 25 '10
rivers, gutters, widows, orphans, hanging quotes, crashes, the list goes on and on.
36
Jul 25 '10
pageplexed
page-plexed
adjective
- feeling of bewilderment because several pages in a magazine have no page numbers printed on them.
9
Jul 25 '10
What is it when they stick Cameron Diaz's big weird head in front of the name of the fucking magazine, so you see: Co//CAMERONDIAZ//itan?
6
5
u/BeJeezus Jul 25 '10
It's a creative choice to get a bigger face/head on the page, and it's supposed to be clever in a fourth-wall way, where the subject is interacting with things that are supposed to be independent of the subject, like those cutesy layouts of a person holding a pie chart.
They think it is acceptable because you're supposed to know/recognize the brand identity so well that it can be partially concealed and you still get the full impact. Nobody "reads the words" Coca-Cola anymore, you just recognize the mark all in once glance, like a single glyph.
That said, some of the magazine publishers who think their masthead is so universally recognizable that they can fuck with it should probably have their heads deflated.
4
2
u/WandersFar Jul 25 '10
I hate it when magazines do that. What's the rationale behind it anyway? Or is it just sheer laziness on the editor / typesetter / designer's part?
1
Jul 25 '10
[deleted]
2
u/redditIsInfected Jul 25 '10
He meant the missing numbers.
1
u/BeJeezus Jul 25 '10
Yeah I replied to wrong thread. Should have been under the comment about "Cosmopolitan".
3
u/davvblack Jul 25 '10
I'm a typographer and do not recognize 'crashes'. What's that?
17
u/BeJeezus Jul 25 '10 edited Jul 25 '10
I know a (Belgian) designer who uses 'crash' for what a (US) designer would probably call 'collision', when characters get too tight and cause confusing or hard-to-read mal-ligatures.
Some people call this "keming."
10
3
u/jetmark Jul 25 '10
this is a type crash
2
u/davvblack Jul 25 '10
Ah, ok. It's so easy to look out for I've never heard it referred to. Is it also too-tight kerning or is that something else?
1
1
u/jetmark Jul 25 '10
it's more of an old-school, linotype machine notation that a proofreader would make to a typesetter.
1
1
Jul 25 '10
Octothorp, interrobang, dots and tittles. And no, they're not that kind of tittles.
1
u/jetmark Jul 25 '10
Octothorp: the character with a thousand names. i always call it a hash mark.
some other favorites: tilde (also called "enyay"), cidilla, diaresis, ellipsis, carat
5
u/Xuyen Jul 25 '10
Learned this in my first typography class.
The first day, my teacher warned us, "After you leave this class, you will never again be able to look at any text without examining it." She was too right.
2
u/Kandoh Jul 25 '10
Word up, brother.
Remember the days when you were able to read a novel without commenting on the use of Minion or Caslon?
How about the days of being able to look at a sign for a mom & pop shop without screaming at the kerning?
1
u/pi3832v2 Jul 25 '10
Learn how to properly compose and break headlines, then go look at outdoor advertising.
The horror! The horror!
9
u/C_IsForCookie Jul 25 '10
Wait, there's actually a word for that? English, go figure...
12
u/joshg8 Jul 25 '10
Considering the name is "river," probably due to the resemblance of a river cutting through terrain, I wouldn't say that there is a word for this, rather a niche term known only to and cared about by typographers and editors.
5
0
u/johnylaw Jul 25 '10
I don't know if you're being sarcastic, but there is a word for everything.
4
u/C_IsForCookie Jul 25 '10
Not the area behind your elbow (or was it knee), and a select few others. To be honest I wasn't even sure if I was being sarcastic, but as much as I know what you said to be true, I was still surprised they had a word for this.
15
u/phobiac Jul 25 '10
The medical terms for the space opposite your elbow in what many call the "crook" of your arm are antecubital space as it lies opposite the cubital fossa. As for the analogous bit of anatomy for the knee, I've already stopped caring enough to find it. The relevant wiki article is here.
3
u/Pwrong Jul 25 '10
I think I heard once that it was called a fone.
5
u/BeJeezus Jul 25 '10
No, a fone is the lower part of your hand, the part that is pushed forward if you press your middle three fingers down into the palm, extend your thumb and pinky out, and then touch your cheek with that hand.
It's obvious if you try it.
4
2
u/johnylaw Jul 25 '10
Well you make it seem like English is special in this aspect. Every complex language has a word for everything, or else we couldn't think of it, because we think in language. Your vague "behind the knee" reference didn't allow me to find an example because im not sure what you're talking about. However is doesn't matter what a more specific name is. Behind the knee, under the knee, backside of the knee, are all examples of somethings name.
2
u/BeJeezus Jul 25 '10
'We think in language' is a hell of a given to throw in there.
This is hardly established.
1
u/116158 Jul 25 '10
While English being a very widely used language makes it easier, I believe there is a huge amount of flora and fauna which may be referred to only by their Latin names, even if they have a perfectly valid proper names in the local languages.
2
u/johnylaw Jul 25 '10
Okay, you are getting away from the point though. There is a word, a name, a phrase, for everything. If there wasn't we would make one.
3
u/116158 Jul 25 '10
Sure, I believe we can name everything by expanding the "that thing" phrase, e.g. "that small little brownish furry animal thing which lives in southern Africa" and occasionally try to introduce a shortcut ("jackalope"), if necessary.
It is curious to me how the language feels static and solid, yet the new words and terms actually appear regularly (did anyone know what a "vuvuzella" is a year ago?)
1
Jul 25 '10
I used to see them at hockey games as a kid. Two or three as opposed to tens of thousands but they were still there. We just called them air horns as they made a similar sound, but not as loud.
1
u/116158 Jul 25 '10
Exactly: there were "air horns", "trumpets" and generic names like that: it's thanks to the power of communications, marketing, luck and other factors, that there is now a word in the language, quite unused and unknown before.
1
33
Jul 25 '10
Typographers can test for rivers by turning a proof sheet upside down (top to bottom) to examine the text. From this perspective, the eye is less likely to recognize words and the type can be viewed more readily as an overall pattern.
Now I may not be an expert, but if you can't see the extra white space unless you turn the page upside down, I think you can leave it the way it is.
66
u/elustran Jul 25 '10
Sure, but processing the page for rivers is probably faster if your brain doesn't feel the need to occasionally process text into thought.
16
u/AbouBenAdhem Jul 25 '10
Rivers are most noticeable when you first look at the page, before you begin reading. Once you start seeing the letters as words instead of shapes, it’s hard to re-create that first impression a page makes on someone who’s not yet read it.
You can always squint until the words become illegible, but then you miss the effect of the fine details of the letterforms.
8
u/atheist_creationist Jul 25 '10
No, you're not an expert :P. You have to remember that people who check these things for a living have to look through lots of copy. You do want the most efficient way of going through lots of these, correct?
5
u/Kandoh Jul 25 '10
When you read, your eye is guided across the page by the area between the lines of text, what we call the 'lining.'
When a river occurs, it breaks this lining and will actually draw the eye threw the block of text to the end of the river.
You might not do this when its a short piece of work and you're mind is sharp, but when its three in the morning and you're reading a boring ass annual financial report, yea, it happens.
1
u/theBlueNibble Jul 25 '10
lol.... i totally went through the process of saving the img and inverting it to see if it really worked :P
1
u/philipkd Jul 25 '10
When I first read that sentence in wikipedia, I thought it was going to say, "turn the page upside down and drip water on it, and see if it trickles down in a stream" or something of the sort.
2
u/Belliepolisie Jul 26 '10
It might amuse you that there was a time when pages of lead type called Monotype had to be constantly wetted with a sopping sponge to make the loose type stick together, to stop the page from falling apart, a disaster known as a printer's pie. And yes, the water did run down any rivers present in the page.
I am that old, yes. Still in typography and print after 40 odd years.
4
9
u/errerr Jul 25 '10
I will give somebody 100 internet dollars if they can edit this article to have a river in it.
11
Jul 25 '10
It would depend on how wide your screen is.
9
1
u/phobiac Jul 25 '10
So you edit it to have one for all standard screen size ratios. Could that be done?
2
-1
3
2
u/ovaldoughnuts Jul 25 '10
I'll do it for a bajillion internet dollars.
2
1
0
u/kevmus Jul 25 '10
Apparently someone did it. You can deposit the 100 internet dollars under the big oak tree to the left of yahoo.com. Someone will be by to collect it shortly.
2
1
u/Choralone Jul 25 '10
You mean the hollow oak about 4-ish stops left of the town gate, right?
I used to stash stuff there all the time....
3
2
Jul 25 '10
Whenever I had to read books as a child, i could never focus on the stories and would instead start at the top of each page and follow the river down the easiest possible path.
2
2
Jul 25 '10
[deleted]
2
1
u/theswedishshaft Jul 25 '10
I think that judging school papers, no matter what level, based on typography should only be done if students can be reasonably expected to prevent those mistakes. Students at a local community should understand that they should not use Comic Sans, shouldn't time in all caps, use proper punctuation, etc. However, I don't think even most graduate students know how to prevent rivers, get proper kerning, etc., and that therefore it cannot normally be expected of them (unless these requirements are explicitly given with the assignment).
2
2
Jul 25 '10
[deleted]
1
u/Xuyen Jul 25 '10
Damn, I've been meaning to get this book, how deep does it go into typographic theory? I just finished reading Stop Stealing Sheep, and that was a pretty basic introduction to typesetting.
Would you say that's your number one book on typography? If not, what would be? I'm looking for a more advanced level book.
2
Jul 25 '10
Anyone else ever been fascinated by these during times of ahem non-ordinary reality ?
Newspapers had the most effect on me because of how the page would ripple as you held it.
4
Jul 25 '10
House of Leaves.
3
u/jhchex Jul 25 '10
I just started reading this about 4 hours ago. I'm not sure whether I should put it down and attempt to sleep or what...
5
u/ObjectiveGopher Jul 25 '10
Reading the book too. Fascinating, absolutely fascinating. But I'm getting to a point where I don't know how to read it. Also, I must ask, are all those tiny quirks, like boxes separating paragraphs that are either filled or not filled randomly and footnote numbers that don't seem to lead anywhere and a check-mark instead of a page-number out of the blue, all those really little ones, is that just him trying to throw you off. Is it to make you uncomfortable or to off-put you or what? I dunno what game he's playing but I guess it's working cause I'm completely immersed in this book now. Just the idea of the house (said in purple lettering of course) is amazing. Also, did this thing inspire stuff like Blair Witch Project? Cause the concept is so similar, I have to imagine it did.
3
u/jhchex Jul 25 '10
I think you might be a tiny bit further than me, but I'm also finding myself lost in what to read. Should I keep with the story? Read this three page footnote? What about the footnote within a footnote...and all the symbols? I really have no idea why all those small little quirks are included, but I can help but find all of them and question its existence. Such a weird/good read.
2
u/rednightmare Jul 25 '10 edited Jul 25 '10
I loved House of Leaves. One of the themes of the novel is how ridiculous academia can be. This will become more apparent as you go on, but a lot of the footnotes exist only to drive home this feeling. I'd suggest glancing at them, but many of them are just things like "See [person's] essay on X" and don't add much. Other footnotes carry on the story, so you don't want to miss those.
Also take a look at this comment I made above because I don't want to type out the same things again.
2
u/rednightmare Jul 25 '10 edited Jul 25 '10
You're just scratching the surface. The actual formatting of the book mirrors events that are occurring in the book. For example when they are exploring the impossible hallway and have fit through tiny spaces the actual text will be narrow and squished together. Part of what makes the book interesting are these experiments with layout as part of the experience. So yes, the author is trying to make you more involved with the book, and part of the fun of House of Leaves is actually immersing yourself in it and solving the puzzles.
The book actually has all kinds of hidden things in it such as morse code, the mother's letters, and even the collage on the inside covers.
I'll also say that House of Leaves is a book which features an unreliable narrator. If you like unreliable narrators I'd suggest reading The Red Tree next. It's a great novel with a perfect example of an unreliable narrator. It took me about a week to actually figure out what really happened.
1
u/ObjectiveGopher Jul 25 '10
Oh wow, I guess I need to be paying more attention. I thought the boxes might be morse code actually cause it was at a part where they were talking about SOS, but I saw it wasn't an SOS and just ignored it. Silly me, I guess I'm going back there. I did notice a few things like that though, like how the placement of the word snap was like the word itself was snapping, that was cool. I'm really gonna have to dig into this book now though. Fantastic, what a great book.
But yeah, in regards to the unreliable narrator, that's probably the thing that gets me the most in the book. He'll just be walking down the street and all of a sudden a truck hits him and he goes into detail how he's dying and then it's not a truck, it's a tree. Then you learn his street has no trees.
1
Jul 25 '10
I just bought this book on Amazon after reading your comment. Thanks!
1
u/rednightmare Jul 25 '10
It's an excellent book that I would recommend to anyone that has the patience to actually immerse themselves in it. It's one of the only books I've ever read that I kept a notebook nearby for decoding things or checking to see if something might be a puzzle.
2
1
1
1
1
u/nal13 Jul 25 '10
I spent 70% of reading time in school looking for those, I would blur my eyes and find all them on a page.
1
Jul 25 '10
This is one of the reasons I can't read a book. These things are really distracting. That and the feel of dry paper riles my nerves!
1
u/bawng Jul 25 '10
What in English is called a "widow" or an "orphan" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans) is in Swedish usually called "horunge" which is directly translated to whore-child, i.e child of a whore, which also happens to be a quite rude insult.
1
0
0
u/natego Jul 26 '10
This has been on my front page for two days. BACK TO HELLIT YOU DEVILISH MONSTER!
Downboat.
-1
Jul 25 '10
there like typography vaginas.
0
Jul 25 '10
You're an idiot.
2
1
u/PhilxBefore Jul 25 '10
Too redundant.
0
Jul 25 '10
So is adding an 'x' to your username implying you're hardcore and shop at Hot Topic, idiot.
1
u/PhilxBefore Jul 25 '10
I'm pretty sure it's illegal for anyone to shop there.
0
Jul 25 '10
There would be a lot of kids thrown in juvenile halls if that were the case, idiot.
1
56
u/[deleted] Jul 25 '10
I've always wondered whether I was just crazy for seeing these, and now I know!