In which authors make me crazy. So what else is new.
Designing a book where the author has a block of text like a really long epigraph at the start of each section. This text is supposed to begin on a right-hand page. It can go to the left hand.
But they are SO GODDAMNED INCONSISTENT IN LENGTH. So if I style it one way, I can fit the short epigraphs on their own page, but then like two or three lines of the long ones hang over to the next page. Having only two or three lines on a page is bad typesetting. A page of text should have at least five lines.
But the short ones aren't long enough to puff out so they have 5 lines on the next page unless I set them in really big type with lots of leading and giant margins. That looks ridiculous.
And a similar problem (same book): lots of poems. Poems with very long lines. I have to set the text full width to accommodate the poem lines so nothing rebreaks. But if I do this but then give giant margins to the epigraphs mentioned above, the pages are going to look really weird one after the other with the wobbly margins.
OTOH, if I give the poems big margins like the epigraphs, then the poems are going to have LOTS AND LOTS of turn lines--the poem is going to look like this:
This is a poem line and it is just a bit too
long
For the page width to accommodate it and still
look good
This would be so much easier if the poem
lines
Were all short enough to fit on just a single
line
While I know no author will ever ever ever follow this suggestion, I'm going to say it anyway:
Please try to remember that books aren't 8.5" x 11" (or A4, or whatever is standard copy paper in your country).
And if you don't want to remember that, please try not to get in a tizzy when the designer has to commit some crimes against text in order to translate your art to a book-sized page.