A page with no margin is not a page. It is a poster. Posters are excellent at one job and ours is not it. The margin is the only part of the page the printer does not get paid for. We treat it as the place where the work happens.
The hairline is not a rule.
The hairline that opens every chapter is set at 0.25pt and runs the length of the type column, not the trim. It is not a rule — rules close. The hairline is a request, made to the reader, to slow down before the first sentence does the slowing for them. We have shipped a chapter without a hairline. We have not shipped a chapter without a margin.
Marginalia, in our editions, is set ragged-right in oldstyle small caps at 8pt. It carries date stamps, source notes, and the editor’s passes. Nothing is set in the margin that the body could not carry; everything in the margin is what the body refused to interrupt itself for. The distinction is the whole register.
The margin is the only part of the page the printer does not pay for. Use it as if it were unpaid — because, on the press, it is.
The § corr. mark.
Every edition carries a corrigenda margin, marked § corr.beside the line. The mark is not an apology. It is the editor’s record that the reading happened, that a second pair of eyes ran along the baseline, that the page was held to its own standard before it was handed over. Editions without corrigenda are not editions. They are manuscripts the press did not have the patience to finish.
In Edition III, the § corr. mark appears in the outer margin only. The inner margin — the gutter — is reserved. We use it for nothing. We protect it from everything. The blank gutter is the only place on the page where the press refuses to print, and that refusal is what tells the reader the binding will hold.
A note on the gutter.
Edition III’s gutter is set to 22mm. Tight by stationery standards, generous by paperback ones. We have argued about the figure for the length of every edition; we will argue about it again. The argument is the gutter. The figure is the receipt.