A pamphlet about plain pages. Issue 31, March 2017.
Five essays this month on pages that are nothing but their words: why they load at once, why they last, and why almost nobody is paid to make them.
Printed nowhere. Written by six people who have never met. Out on the first Tuesday of the month since 2014.
In this issue
You do not furnish a letter. You write it, and the reader decides where to sit.
We weighed two hundred front pages. The heaviest was a recipe for toast.
A link that looks like a link needs no instructions and no hover state.
Mostly nobody, which is both the trouble and the point.
Letters this week
“I still use a spacer image and I am not sorry.” Marit Aas, on issue 26.
“Forty kilobytes is a luxury. Try four.” Dov Peretz, on this issue.
Four standing subjects
What a page weighs and what the weight buys.
The fonts already on the machine, and nothing else.
Blue, underlined, and going where they say.
A label, a box, a button that says what it does.
Jonas Pell, issue 26, October 2016. 2,400 words and 31 letters.
The essay
But the grid of numbers that a table gives you for nothing is still the clearest thing a browser can draw, and the first essay in this issue counts how often we rebuild it badly.
Open any page of figures and run view-source on it. If the numbers are not in a table, ask what was gained.
Letters on this essay
“I still use a spacer image and I am not sorry.”
Marit Aas
“A table prints. That alone should have settled it.”
Halvard Moe
“You have never had to read one aloud on a phone.”
Tove Lindqvist
Printed as they arrive, spelling included. One letter an issue from each reader.
Send a letter
Received. Your letter on issue 31 will be read before the next issue.
Not sent. The letter below has no address we can answer.
Printed this month
I still use a spacer image and I am not sorry.
Forty is a luxury. Try four, and see what you keep.
Your letter on issue 31
The letter you sent on issue 31 will not be printed. This cannot be undone.
How a page with nothing on it gets written, read and printed once a month.
How an issue is made
Six people who have never met send each other text files. On the last Friday of the month the files that everyone has read become an issue, and the rest wait.
An essay is printed when its address will never change. After that only a correction is allowed, dated, at the foot.
Marks
Twelve issues, every essay still at its first address.
| Issue | Title | Out | Letters | Essays | Words |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 | Blue and purple | 2016-12-06 | open | 5 | 9,800 |
| 27 | The view source issue | 2016-11-01 | open | 6 | 12,400 |
| 26 | Tables were fine | 2016-10-04 | closing | 4 | 8,100 |
| 25 | Against the hamburger | 2016-09-06 | closed | 5 | 10,300 |
| 24 | Read it on a train | 2016-08-02 | closed | 5 | 9,200 |
Subject: carousels