The Comeback Of Print

On the subject of Beirut, the former home of the Phoenicians who came up with the idea of writing with an alphabet, let's have another look at how much more we could be getting out of our alphabet.

Nowadays almost all of what we read is digital. Most people don't read that much in hard copy any more. Printed hard copy hasn't yet joined the dinosaurs but is clearly on the way out.

But not so fast. I see a lot that the printing and publishing industries could be doing to roll back some of the apparently inexorable gains made by digital. None of this requires any new technology, just some creative thinking.

It is a simple matter to print text in ink of different colors. In a novel or story why not assign a different color of ink to each major character? When Character A speaks the words might be printed in red. When Character B speaks the words might be printed in green. Wouldn't that make the story more lively and easy to follow?

Suppose there was an article involving two or more different viewpoints. Why not express one viewpoint in red, and another in blue? This would only be for the essence of each viewpoint. Comparisons of the viewpoints and observers' opinions would be in ordinary black ink.

By coloring and varying in shade the letters on a page of text we could easily embed a photograph or illustration in the words on each page. The photo or illustration would not be separate from the words on the page but would actually be embedded in them. This would be a novel idea that would make any book more interesting, and would be much easier to do in print than in digital.

The printing fonts in use now were not intended for this. Why not develop a new font especially for printing text and illustrations in one? The letters would take up more of the space on the page relative to present fonts, to better convey the illustrations. One way of looking at it would be the illustrations embedded in the text. The opposite way of looking at it would be the text embedded in the illustrations.

There is a lot that print could be doing to regain territory that seems to have been lost to digital. It would be relatively easy to do and wouldn't require any new technology. It just requires some creative thinking.