During my second year, I discovered the overlap between my two realms of study: writing and medicine. I distinctly remember writing a column called “The Poetics of Chemistry,” in which I talked about a project I’d done that harnessed the synergy between science and writing.
As much as I’ve loved my poetry and literature classes — who doesn’t like learning that chickens used to be called “feathered household people” — my favorite this semester has undoubtedly been my literary editing and desktop publishing course. I’ve found in this class an intersection of art, technology and culture that so perfectly embodies my interests.
When I signed up for it, I thought I’d stay in my creative bubble — maybe branching out to learn a little about formatting so I could maybe be on the staff of a literary magazine one day if I so chose. I also figured that the technology of desktop publishing couldn’t be much more difficult than the Microsoft Office programs I learned in high school.
Needless to say, I was wrong on both accounts. Desktop publishing software is considerably more complicated — albeit yielding of much better results — than Word. And the tumultuous nature of today’s publishing industry isn’t so much a clear-cut divide between print and online as it is a turbulent blur.
You’ve probably heard people say for years that the print media is dead, dying or crippled. Maybe that’s true, to some degree, but in reality print media is simply in a state of transition. Maybe you’re reading this online — on your computer or your phone — or maybe you’ve got a physical copy of The Cavalier Daily. The point is that we’re in a time of change, and the myriad forms of written media are transforming the way we view literature and journalism.
The divide between literature and journalism is an interesting one, and something I hadn’t thought of before I found myself struggling to convert a poetry manuscript to ePub format. Journalism has made the digital jump fairly effortlessly because formatting is less essential. When I read The New York Times online, I don’t pay attention to line breaks like I do when reading a poem in The New Yorker.
But when our class worked to convert print manuscripts of poems and fiction to an online format, I became acutely aware of the difficulties, especially those pertaining to poetry. Any poet should be alarmed that somebody with an e-reader can readily adjust the font size of anything they are reading. Part of poetry’s impact is its formatting — its use of white space and line breaks. Even the font used can convey meaning.
Currently, ePub formats don’t allow small caps at all — an ostensibly trivial fact, but somewhat disconcerting to those of us who are small-caps aficionados. When I write a column for this paper, it isn’t critical to me what font type, size, or format is used for the body text or title. There is an art to journalism, but its driving force is content. Poetry places a premium on aesthetic, and when you take away aesthetic options, some of the impact of poetry is lost.
To be clear, I’m not a Luddite. I value technological advancement and going paperless as much as the next college student. But I am now more acutely aware of our fascinating place in history. I look forward to the day when we can be largely paperless, but I’m holding off on buying an e-reader until I can have my small caps paperless, too.
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