Even Pages/Chapter

[Jean Weber <jhweber -at- WHITSUNDAY -dot- NET -dot- AU>]

On Wed, 26 May 1999, Walter Hanig <whanig -at- QUALCOMM -dot- COM> wrote,
>>Actually, I can think of a very good reason to force each chapter to end on
>>an even page.
>Another justification is that many doc's are saved to PDF and then printed,
>often with duplex printers.

Walter's reference to PDFs reminds me of one of my clients, who had exactly
the opposite concern. For an in-house project, he specified that chapters
must NOT be forced to start on any particular page, because the docs were
going to be put into PDF and placed on the company's intranet. (They would
not be available in printed form.) Employees were expected to read the docs
online, and they got annoyed when having to scroll past pages containing
only headers and footers. If employees chose to print out the docs, most of
them would print on their personal desktop printers, which were not duplex
capable; again, they would be annoyed by the "blank" pages. I appreciated
this point of view, since I have exactly the same reaction.

For the same set of intranet PDF docs, we got rid of the binding gutter
because (a) no matter which side we specified for the gutter, it would be
wrong for some pages on some printers; and (b) if the gutter is specified
for the "inside" margin of the page, it jumps from one side to the other
when viewed on screen, and many people find this annoying (I certainly do).
We also put the page number in the center of the footer instead of on the
"outside" edge, for the same reason.

This sounds like another case of "know your audience."


Regards, Jean
Jean Hollis Weber
The Technical Editors' Eyrie  http://www.wrevenge.com.au/
mailto:jhweber -at- whitsunday -dot- net -dot- au


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