Earlier in Shaping Language, I said that the arrangement of letters and sounds shapes the meaning of the language itself. On a larger scale, the arrangement of the page itself can impact readers and shape the meaning of a text.

An extreme example of form informing content on a novel scale is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. I first heard of the book just last year when a classmate in my English Capstone seminar decided to write her Senior Thesis on House of Leaves. The main focus of her thesis that stuck with me was the section of the story that focused on the Navidson family who return home to find strange anomalies in their house. A room appears that has never been there, a hallway appears where none could possibly exist, and the interior measurements of the home exceed those of the exterior.

To illustrate the incongruities that physically affect the Navidsons to the point of madness, Danielewski formatted his book in such a away that frustrates and confounds the reader. Large portions of the story are told in footnotes running the length of whole chapters, some pages are filled with only one or two words, some passages appear clearly only when shown in a mirror, and so on. The book is formatted in the most inconsistent and unconventional ways that the reader must literally turn the book upside down and inside out to follow the story in places.

Page structure determining underlying meaning exists not just in literature. Twitter, for those social media butterflies, has recently unveiled its new format that will soon become the standard user interface for the platform. Shown here and explained briefly in an article on Mashable, the proportions of Twitter’s new layout are influenced and inspired by the Golden Ratio, an irrational mathematical constant dubbed phi.

I have heard of the Golden Ratio in reference to measurements of beauty: features of a face or figure that is deemed beautiful often conform to the proportions of the Golden Ratio. Proportion relates to balance which ties directly into attractiveness in nature, which in this sense is not to be mistaken with beauty. Insects like butterflies and crickets often choose their mates based on their bilateral symmetry or how closely the right and left halves of their body resemble each other. Humans do this too, though not so obviously at times. We might not always notice when a lady’s eyes are perfectly symmetrical but we certainly notice when they’re off kilter a bit. Symmetry and proportion equate to perfection which we equate to beauty. Thus, in my estimation, the Golden Ratio means to subconsciously alter Twitter users’ impression of the interface and deem it more attractive, perhaps as a means of converting more site visitors into Tweeters or simply to make it prettier for current users.

Page formatting is all around us and I think it’s worth noting what effect it has on our perception of the content any given page conveys.

A beautiful infographic found its way into my literary path courtesy of Ligature, Loop & Stream (click on the image for the larger close-up version). The poster illustrates and labels the structural elements of language at the most elementary level using architectural and anatomical vocabulary to diagram the shapes and forms that make up letters. For example, you’ll find a dot above the letter i but a tittle above the letter j. The hole in an e is an eye while the hole in an o is a counter. A tail descends below the baseline in a y while a descender does so in a q.

In the world of words, from typography to page formatting, looks do matter.

I have an interest in how the shape of writing informs the content of the writing. Typically I look at macro elements of writing structure (page layout, chapter arrangement, syntax, vocabulary). Lettering flies below my radar most times I read, but I do notice differences in fonts and prefer some to others. It might seem silly, but Georgia (the font of this blog) feels clean but warm, Times New Roman looks professional, and Arial seems bland. (These are my impressions, not what you may feel or the ideas behind the original design of the font.) The connotations and nuances of fonts and lettering styles don’t always register to us on a conscious level (if they did, they might get in the way of what we’re supposed to be comprehending with what is being said), but they do affect us and our reading of a text. Comic Sans connotes a younger voice as with a young adult comic book though it might also be used in a more mature graphic novel.

But let’s consider this on a larger scale: words. Diction is one of the most visible elements of style in writing, but more for its denotative qualities than its connotative ones. We tend to think of words in terms of their definition, the meanings that they denote strictly speaking. And rightly so, but that’s just the beginning. Writers, especially poets, explore words on a more qualitative level by looking at what a word might connote beyond what it denotes. Take a look at Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem “Jabberwocky” to see how words with no explicit denotation can still affect a meaning with their connotation:

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Carroll invented 11 of the 23 words in this stanza, virtually half of it, using portmanteaus and imagination. But gyring and gimbling slithy toves still give the sense of an element in the story — the Jabberwocky– as large and lumbering while still sliding and dark. The hard g’s and long o’s summon words like ghoul and ghostly. Mimsy and mome feel like mum, a sound to keep hushed when threat approaches. Even more heuristically, the shape of the dominant letters in the stanza — o’s, g’s, y’s — curve and lengthen much the same as the jabberwocky itself as seen in Tenniel’s illustration. Okay, that might be a stretch, but those are the kinds of ideas that a study of English can instigate.

This idea of shape and structure of language affecting meaning is much larger than I can explore in a single blog post, so I’ll do it in a few. On tomorrow’s agenda: page layout and the architecture of macrostructures.

On this day, 160 years ago, one of the greatest adventure and horror writers of the English language was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Robert Louis Stevenson was the son of lighthouse engineer, the latest in a very long line of lighthouse engineers. Stevenson entered the University of Edinburgh with the intention of following in the family tradition, but the writing bug had caught him early in childhood and would not relent even in adulthood. During holidays from University, he traveled with his father to inspect the family’s lighthouse engineering accomplishments around the country; but the budding author found the journeys more useful as far as inspiration for travel writing than application of his education.

Defying Expectation

While Stevenson is most well-remembered in history for such contributions to literature as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I’d like to focus on the fact that this culture-defining writer did not always start out as such. He, like myself and most writers I know, entered college with a plan and a path that would have guaranteed a certain degree of financial and cultural security. There was nothing wrong with building lighthouses, especially since that was the family industry, but that was simply not where the young Stevenson’s interests took him.

Most of us can appreciate the fear and nerve and passion involved in turning away from the set path of being a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant or whatever defined career we had in mind. I entered university as a physics major intent on working as a scientist at CERN some day. That didn’t quite work out. I, like Stevenson from what I can discern, regarded writing for the longest time as that quaint hobby which I took up in my spare time; writing was leisurely, not a career pursuit.

Stevenson sought out his own path with very little guidance until his collegiate years. University marked a moment in time for him when he could embrace the bohemian lifestyle and mentality that had always existed within him but until then had never been realized with the right words or means of expression. He might not have pursued the vocation of lighthouse engineer that his family had wished or that he himself might have expected for lack of anything better; but through his writing he has created points of light which guide the rest of us still floundering in the vastness of the literary sea. Those lights, those works, while few and far between at times, exist and give us hope that maybe, in defying expectation, we are not abandoning the safe and secure future but instead embracing a more innovative one of our own making.

Two years ago today I attended my first Veterans Day memorial parade. Though I was in England at the time, and it was called a Remembrance Day parade honoring Armistice and all the veterans of wars since the Great War. I was studying abroad for my fall semester in Oxford taking a class on Literature of the First World War. Ed Clarke, our professor, had structured our readings nicely around Remembrance Day. We began reading poetry leading up to and written during the First World War and then continued with the post-war recovery literature after November 11.

I like to call this day Poppy Day, as it is sometimes referred to, because of the story that goes with the name. Ed told us how the trenches dug in WWI literally cut a scar through Europe, particularly France and Belgium. After the fighting stopped, the scarred earth lay abandoned and barren. But, after many months, the upturned earth began to bloom with wild flowers. Red poppies were supposedly some of the first flowers to emerge from the wreckage, so the end of the war is marked by red poppies worn on lapels, hats, anywhere you can pin one.

Lest we forget the poetry

I honor my veterans not just by consciously acknowledging the freedoms I enjoy because of their efforts but also by recalling the truths of war (as much as any noncombatant can). War is a cause, an event, that tends to lose perspective and scale by everyone. The following poem, “Breakfast” by Wilfrid Gibson, while not particularly happy or celebratory, was one of the poems I read abroad that spoke to and stayed with me. I found it in Andrew Motion’s superb collection First World War Poems.

We ate our breakfast lying on our backs,
Because the shells were screeching overhead.
I bet a rasher to a loaf of bread
That Hull United would beat Halifax
When Jimmy Strainthorpe played full-back instead
Of Billy Bradford. Ginger raised his head
And cursed, and took the bet; and dropt back dead.
We ate our breakfast lying on our backs,
Because the shells were screeching overhead.

Gibson’s poem acts on a number of different registers. The rhyme and repetition of the opening lines at the close creates a surreal sense of continuity, as though nothing at all has gone wrong. Breakfast as the titular subject also invites a sense of comfort that belies the seriousness of the surrounding combat. And yet the suddenness of Ginger’s death so jarringly contrasts with everything else happening that I can’t really process it and react, almost as the surviving characters cannot react. It is simply beyond my comprehension that breakfast and death can coexist so seemlessly. I think that is part of Gibson’s point.

On this day in 1605, a provincial English Catholic named Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up the House of Parliament by loading barrels of gunpowder into the basement and thus assassinate the Protestant King James I. His plot was foiled and he, after being caught, was hanged. To celebrate the preservation of the monarchy, England marks this day with bonfires and fireworks. In some towns, effigies of Guy Fawkes are burned and children go round to houses in a Halloween-like fashion asking for “a penny for the Guy” to buy fireworks.

While history often regards Guy Fawkes as a failed terrorist, writer Alan Moore and illustrator David Lloyd immortalized the Guy in their graphic novel V for Vendetta. Guy Fawkes becomes a freedom fighter and alternative persona of the mysterious V who attempts to overthrow a fascist government ruling a surreal England.

In 2006, the film adaptation of V for Vendetta was released, introducing me and a world of other young readers and writers to Jacobian history and graphic novel source material. To celebrate the day, I give you one version of the popular rhyme that goes with celebrating the failure or effort of Guy Fawkes.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, ’twas his intent
To blow up the King and Parli’ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s mercy he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Hulloa boys, Hulloa boys, let the bells ring.
Hulloa boys, hulloa boys, God save the King!

The popularity of graphic novels has been growing exponentially for the last few decades, especially now with the advent of feature film technology that can virtually replicate stylized graphics with real actors and sets. Now, graphic novels are not to be confused with comic books; while the medium is similar, graphic novels encompass fully developed plots and characters arcs rather than serialized adventures. V for Vendetta is a hefty hardbound tome that blended in with all my other required reading for high school English class.

The incorporation of the visual element enhances some dimensions of the story while somewhat sacrificing others. Dialogue and visuals dominate the story-telling process; the internal monologue works in tandem with the expressions of the speaker. A narrative can still be incorporated, but not nearly as extensively as in a strictly prose piece. Look at this panel from V for Vendetta…

Text occupies a minimal portion of the page while visuals carry across the tone and action of the story. I’ve always been more one for prose rather than art (the ability to draw straight lines is something of a foreign concept to me) but I must marvel at the efficacy of the art and its ability to convey narrative without relying on words. This isn’t my medium, but it is a literary form that demands more thoughtful inspection and respect.