Bible Design and Binding

Poetry in Single Column Settings

One of the advantages modern Bibles possess over their older counterparts is paragraphed text. When you don't present the entire Bible in verse form, the passages that really are verse are easier to distinguish. But this is a double-edged sword. Paragraphed texts in two-column settings don't have an awful lot of room for a line of verse to fit. As a result, sections of poetry can be badly cut up. 

Case in point: A Bible Design Blog reader e-mailed me recently wondering if there was a formatting error in his R. L. Allan Reader's Edition ESV. As he scanned through Isaiah 66, he found a strange line break in the middle of verse 2. The word "be" is all alone on the line, with the finishing "declares the Lord" on the line below, spaced way over. Like so:

Consulting the Classic Reference setting in his Allan's ESV1, he found exactly the same thing. If it was an error, it had been repeated over time without being caught. And after all, it looks like an error, doesn't it? You can imagine the typesetter accidentially hitting the return button and not catching the mistake.

It's not a mistake, of course. This is intentional. The translators, in versifying the text, wanted to set the dialogue tag apart from what was being said. The easiest way to explain this is with a picture:

Leather Journals, etc., at Graphic Image

Somebody went nuts over the winter sale at Graphic Image, and that somebody was me. If you aren't familiar with Graphic Image, they're an American maker of leather journals, albums, and accessories -- the kind of thing you used to find in stationary stores (and still do, where they still exist). I bought one of their legal pad folders at Hampton Stationery when I was in Virginia last summer, and recently sprang for the 7" Wire-O-Notebook in mocha goatskin, which is roughly the size of my Cambridge Pitt Minion (see below). 

Now that the sale is on, I keep going back for more. Brown and tan goatskin-covered journals make a nice companion to brown and tan goatskin-covered Bibles, after all. And the prices aren't bad at all. The journals pictured here ran between $39 and $14 each. Some have raised bands, others don't. Most have thick, lined pages. They're printed in Korea and bound in the USA. The paper meets the requirements for ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper), and (according to the legend in back): "All materials in this book meet established criteria for their preservation for several hundred years without significant deterioration under normal use and storage conditions." 

R. L. Allan Single Column Reference ESV in Brown Highland Goatskin

At the risk of being accused of featuring "all ESV, all the time," I have another edition of the ESV to write about, the R. L. Allan Single Column Reference ESV. This re-issue of the discontinued SCR format late last year has been so popular that I'm told they're either out of stock already or on teetering on the brink, depending on color choice, with a new wave expected this Spring. They're available directly from R. L. Allan and at EvangelicalBible.com. The one pictured here is brown, but black and navy blue are also available.

If you're ever tempted to think of me as a "taste maker," the story of the Single Column Reference ESV should disabuse you of the notion. When Crossway originally released it, the SCR was the first-ever single column setting of the ESV. Needless to say, I got very excited. Finally, the Bible I'd been waiting for! Then the other shoe dropped. Yes, the text was in one column, but Crossway had made the decision to introduce another first: the first ESV not to be paragraphed.

The Case for Color (or "L'heure verte at BDB")

Yesterday I shared my dream of having two single column ESVs, the Legacy and the Clarion, rebound in as hardcovers in matching green leather, which prompted commenter J. Kru to ask after the state of my cranial health:

But... did you say GREEN? A GREEN Bible? Did you hit your head or something? that's crazy talk. Next up: the Mars Hill Study Bible, bound in chain mail.

Now I can dish it out as well as I can take it. In fact, I'd like to think I can take it even better than I can dish it out. Lest rumors of my unhinged mind take hold on the Internet, though, I thought it would be worthwhile to explain my rationale. 

If you've been a reader for any length of time, you know that I don't subscribe to the Henry Ford theory of bookbinding ("any color you want, so long as it's black"). I wouldn't have made a very good Pilgrim, assuming you believe the Pilgrims only wore black apart from their shiny shoe buckles and their big white collars. Give me color any day! Which is why I've waxed rhapsodically in the past about sights like this:

And this:

Single Column Legacy ESV (Part 3): Legacy vs. Clarion

Nothing lasts forever, but if you're waiting on a nicely-bound single column ESV, you might have your doubts. The Clarions seem to have been recalled due to a typographical error in the Old Testament, and the brown cowhide Legacy was pushed back thanks to problems with the binding. All we know for certain is that, some time in 2012, some of us will be pondering the profound question: Legacy vs. Clarion? Here they are to make a comparison:

Clarion (left) vs. Legacy (right)

For the moment, both of the editions pictured above might as well be bound in unobtainium. What you're looking at is, on the right, one of the now-delayed brown cowhide Single Column Legacy ESVs. The problem with this run is that the cover separates from the liner, probably due to the thickness of board used in the spine, which doesn't allow much flex. On the left, you're looking at an unbound text block of the Clarion ESV, the guts of what would be a brown calfskin edition (hence the brown ribbons). While neither of these are quite ready for the market, we can make some helpful observations.