My column “ Bouquets and brickbats ” (Feb. 27, 2017) dealt extensively with the newspaper’s redesign. Most of the readers appreciated the spirit that guided the redesign. They agreed with the Editor’s idea of steadfastly following a content-driven approach. He wrote: “The design has been used to communicate content rather than compete with it for attention. The effort has been to marry the two seamlessly and produce a look that favours cleanliness over clutter, an easy elegance over exaggerated effect.”
The Editor also spoke about change as the new constant. Now, another set of changes has been put in place. This time too, care has been taken to not alter the values that govern this newspaper. The brickbats we received earlier were about font size. P. Ramachandran, a reader from Bengaluru, wrote: “While appreciating your new endeavour to redesign The Hindu , I am sorry to inform you that it is unreadable for senior citizens like me (68 years) as the font is very small.” B. Jambulingam from Thanjavur felt that the font size of the name of the city in the dateline should either be increased to the next size or be printed in bold.
Daily paradox
Before I begin to delineate the changes in the font size, let’s first try to understand the mind of editors and designers who put a newspaper together and the intrinsic paradox they have to deal with everyday. It is similar to the paradoxes presented by Zeno of Elea. His paradoxes of plurality attempted to show that ontological pluralism — a belief in the existence of many things rather than only one — leads to absurd conclusions. And a paradox that achieved immortal status, to quote Jorge Luis Borges, is the perpetual race of Achilles and the tortoise. Borges succinctly summarised the paradox thus: “Achilles, symbol of speed, has to catch up with the tortoise, symbol of slowness. Achilles runs ten times faster than the tortoise and so gives him a ten-metre advantage. Achilles runs those ten metres, the tortoise one; Achilles runs the metre, the tortoise runs a decimetre; Achilles runs the decimetre, the tortoise runs a centimetre; Achilles runs the centimetre, the tortoise runs a millimetre; Achilles runs the millimetre, the tortoise a tenth of the millimetre, and ad infinitum, so that Achilles can run forever without catching up.”
In journalism, the desire and the efforts by editors and designers to give a newspaper the right look, the right feel, and content that is both meaningful and empowering is symbolised by Achilles. The final product, the philosophical tortoise, despite earnest and tireless labour, seems to demand more. The gap seems perpetual, and like Sisyphus, the editors continue to strive to catch up.
The small print
In the case of font size, a study by Poynter Institute showed that readers of news websites were encouraged to read more when the font was smaller, and scan more when the font was larger. The findings showed that readers were more focussed when the font size was smaller. Headlines are in a larger font so that readers can scan through them and quickly decide if they want to read the article or not. Then they read the smaller print, the body of the text. Some design scholars wonder whether this is why legal documents are referred to as the small print.
In deference to the readers’ request, how much increase in the font size is possible without sacrificing the elegance of the overall design? How much text can be sacrificed for the sake of reading ease? Based on these two considerations, the font size of the body text has gone up to point size 8.6 from 8.2. The leading text’s font size was earlier 9.6; now it is 10.1. The font size of editorial columns has gone up by 0.5 points. Captions have also been altered to give additional breathing space. These changes have meant that the word length has reduced by nearly 2%. If it gives readers a taut copy, then one can confidently say that Achilles is very close to the tortoise.
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
