Why pagination matters

Pretty much all word processors in the market present content using a scrolling interface.  This is a major difference between writing apps and reading apps. E-readers page their content, writing apps scroll their content.  With no exceptions that I am aware of, true pagination is not offered to authors by word-processors.  

At least until now.  More of which below.

Much has happened in the evolution of writing processes. A major constraint has always been the difficulty of long form output.  Clay tablets turned out not to cut it.  In Cecil B. DeMille's epic production we see Charlton Heston holding two tablets, one in each arm, perhaps an early metaphor of a modern wordprocessor with a two pane design. But perhaps not. Scrolled parchments were an attempt to overcome the inflexibility of the tablet and bring portability to written communication. Eventually,  pages of parchment could be stitched together, and hand produced books produced by scribes became the norm.

The method for engraving letters  on media remained for centuries  some variation or other of the stylus --  quill or pen. The mechanisation of print would have to wait for the time of Gutenberg.

The history of books from the laborious output of scribes  in medieval times to the advent of printing presses and beyond is also the history of pagination. Pagination became the escape from the restrictions of the stone tablet and the bark scroll.  The democratisation of writing has everything to do with the ubiquity of pagination. The private letter, in single sheet or multiples; the blank page notebook or diary. And the implements of engraving: the quill and inkpot; the fountain and ballpoint pen. 

 Prior to the typewriter, for most authors the production of text had always been a singular process involving the use of  primitive tools to transfer words to sheets of paper. The dissemination of text beyond the personal page would require mechanical technology, and this would  be more a corporate than a democratic process.

This is why the typewriter was such a game changer. It was in effect an author's personal and portable printing press.

However, as game changer would be bound to follow  game changer, digital signals would follow mechanical contraptions, and the next significant innovation would go far beyond what the typewriter could offer: the ability to revise drafts in situ.

Once an author would type a sheet, and then scribble some changes in the margins. Then the author would retype the sheet - a "clean copy". Then scribble some more changes, or delete  or rearrange pieces of text with arrows or other markings. Then retype the sheet. A "new draft". 

Tedious. 

Henry James would in his late years dictate drafts to a secretary, who would type them out and present the sheets to the master, perhaps with a cup of tea.

Oscar Wilde would spend the morning adding a comma to a page, and the afternoon removing it.

But finally the word processor. A more productive tool. A more convenient method for revision.  

And yet, curiously, a turning away from the pagination which mechanical printing had embraced. A return to the scrolled manuscript. A scrolled manuscript not on paper but on a glass screen.

Word, docs and all the other systems of scrolling bloat would not offer authors a view of their text in true, book-like pagination. It would be scroll up and scroll down, and the so-called paging quickly getting out of alignment. 

So now.

E-readers do pagination.  But they are read-only devices.

Writoro does true pagination in write mode. Both in single and double page. Like a real book. Scrolling is verboten. (Though it can be enabled if required.) Perfect for authors to both write and design for their final printed output.

Write. Print. Publish.

Try it out at writoro.com