Inches are evil. Fractional evil, but pure evil.
OK, the page trim is 5.5 inches in width, the left and right
margins are each six-eighths of an inch, and there's a quarter-inch gutter—quick,
what is the text width?
On the other hand, if the trim width is 140 millimeters, the
right and left margins are 20 millimeters each (140 – 40) and the gutter is set
to 6 millimeters—quick, the text width is 94
millimeters. Piece of soup.
It is simple arithmetic versus fractions and decimals, and,
well, buy a calculator.
Then you start comparing your document with a pile of open
books on your desk, measuring margins, print areas, and such, and you have to
stop and study your inch ruler. Are the little lines inside the inch tenths,
eighths, or sixteenths of an inch? And if it is either of the latter two, your
blood pressure rises as you try actually to use the measurements.
Try metric: 114 millimeters – two 6-millimeter margins = 102
millimeters, which we divide by three . . . 34 millimeters per column. That's
not only an easier number to arrive at, but a simpler one to imagine or compare.
And the simpler metric figuring is true for all sorts of
things: indents, tables, images, padding around text and graphics, space before
and after paragraphs, how much ground coffee bean to add for a six-cup pot . .
.
Give it a try. Whether you're using Word, InDesign, Quark, or
the vintage PageMaker that still runs on the garage computer (which you set up
to keep score for darts tournaments), go into the options or preferences and
choose millimeters as increments of measurements.
Take pleasure now in how the rulers better regulate your
page and illustrate the relative size of its objects. It's the same with pixels
with a Web page or an image.
Of course, this in a land where people are measured in feet,
horses in lengths, scotch in fifths, and alcohol content in something called proof, which compared with actual
percentage lacks all level of conviction. Oh, and two-by-fours, it turns out,
are not two by four.
What? What if you're dealing with a person or website (such
as Amazon.com's CreateSpace) that talks in inches? Simple. Jump into the
preference settings and change your measurements back to inches, then hop back
to millimeters when your done.
If you're worried about holding the person up while you make
the change, just ask, what's the print area if we use these settings? You'll
have plenty of time to change back while the person searches for a calculator
to figure it out in inches.
(C) 2012, by Story Crest Press
Excellent advice! Thanks!
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