> The design of the text and the whole book format is crucial to the content. > A > book's content can't be divorced from its form because both affect a > reader's > perception and understanding of the text. As my friend Panofsky says the > from > and the idea (subject matter) make the content. And as my new friend Roy > Harris > argues, that content is the reader's constructed context. Typography is as > old > as text itself.
If this is true, then what should we make of different editions of the same book, with varying designs? If we take it to be true in an unqualified sense that 'the whole book format is crucial to the content', it seems we must admit that there is a substantial difference in content between these different editions. But experience suggests that we are not overly concerned with what edition of a book we purchase, or if we are concerned, it is for inconsequential reasons, for example, price, or portability. Furthermore, this experience seems to hold generally. What is my conclusion? To suggest that the above remark requires at the very least qualification. A suggestion on my part is that the required qualification might distinguish by some means a special category of books for which form is crucial, and explain exactly why it is so. The above does raise another potential strategy, however. Suppose we stick to our guns, and do suppose that form is crucial to content, but that this will only be significant when change of form is significant. We could allow that differences between different editions are not significant enough to change content enough for it to be noticeable. Two questions: Is this a strategy worth pursuing? What should we make of editions of books with drastically different form, e.g. e-books, audio books, braille?
