conversation is an engine

I might stop printing. But you’ll have to pry transitions from my cold, dead hands.

"...from my cold, dead hands...."

I’ve been doing things differently without realizing it. For over twenty years I’ve inserted a blank page at the end of sections and chapters so my next section or chapter can begin on a right-hand page. I admit to finding a certain elegance in beginning a new thought on the page lying flat before me and close to my right hand. It just felt right.

No more.

Most of the documents I produce for clients will be used electronically. Few even consider printing them because, well, why would you? Since the screen is always there…and since paper just gets lost anyway…and since as soon as you print something, it changes and your print is outdated…so why print something again? Current audiences will not realize how a right-hand page lies flat on a surface while a left page bubbles up and distorts—an open invitation to move forward.

It’s not just blank pages. Transitions are transitioning away. Remember when transitions were the thing: when you wanted to gently lead your reader from one topic to the next, from one moving part of your argument to the next? Some writing textbooks still talk about making transitions in your writing. But are the days of transitions—just like the days of inserting blank pages—are swiftly passing. Since everything is modular we expect to jump from topic to topic rather than be wooed along.

Nicholas Carr in The Shallows talks about the atomization of information. How books and chapters and articles are already being dismantled so pieces are available here, there and everywhere. People writing books with the help of social media use the situation when they post as they go, so potential reviewers have the opportunity to interact with the writing long before it is even put in the longer (and more expensive book form). One of the dangers is that writers will write for short attentions spans—wait aren’t those people called bloggers and copywriters?

In truth, writers have always written for short attention spans. Back when reading books was the thing smart and interesting people did, writers talked about the reader’s constant pressure to walk away from the text. That was a key motivation for the writer to make the text more interesting. In my writing classes we often lament the lack of readers (in general) and the reader’s constant temptation to click away from the text. Clicking is so much easier than walking.

Blank page insertions may go away, but I doubt transitions will. That’s because communicators still have an innate need to keep an audience interested. Blank pages may be an artifact from the printing days. But transitions are a piece of our humanness that is alive and well and will stick around until our final…transition.

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