A deckle edge is when the pages of a book are cut in a ragged way so that they seem to be trimmed by hand. Turns out the tradition of creating those edges is pretty interesting:

The deckle edge dates back to a time when you used to need a knife to read a book. Those rough edges simulate the look of pages that have been sliced open by the reader. The printing happened on large sheets of paper which were then folded into rectangles the size of the finished pages and bound. The reader then sliced open the folds.

There’s a great article on this tradition at:

www.themillions.com

I have a tendency to make every project more complicated than it needs to be. I think that’s why these re-imagined cover designs for classic science fiction books are so appealing. Each one was created by hand on a single sheet of white paper, then photographed. No fancy computer tricks, expensive software, or any of that jazz. These are stunning.

http://www.creativereview.co.uk…

If a writer wants to use a gender-neutral pronoun to write a sentence, what should he/she/they use? Despite its many virtues, the English language doesn’t have a good solution to this problem.

It’s complicated, but maybe it doesn’t need to be. The New York Times On Language column tackled this recently, and the story behind why we traditionally use he might surprise you…

http://www.nytimes.com…

Let’s say you’re writing a comic, and you want to indicate that your character is out of breath and speaking French from the other side of a closed door. How do you do it?

Nate Piekos knows. Although most of us never give it a second thought, comics have an elaborate, established visual language for speech balloons and their contents. Nate understands this language, and he’s put together a terrific guide to all the variations. It’s a great read, even if you have no interest in ever making a comic for yourself. I guarantee you’ll be surprised at how many of the conventions you already recognize and understand fluently.

http://www.blambot.com/…

The British newspaper, The Guardian, recently asked a number of well known authors a fairly simple simple question: do you enjoy writing? More than a few do not, but they keep doing it anyway.

I get this. Winston Churchill’s once said that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Substitute writing for democracy and way to make a living for form of government and I think you’ll describe how most writers feel about their jobs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/…