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# On margins
- URL: https://proza.site/on-margins/
- Published: 2026-01-21T07:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-14T10:49:32.000Z
- Description: The white space around a page is not empty.
- Author: Daniël van der Winden
- Tags: Notes

A page of a well-made book is about half text and half margin. That always seemed wasteful to me until I started writing in the margins of my own books, at which point it seemed not nearly enough.

The *Hypnerotomachia Poliphili*, printed in Venice in 1499, is often called the most beautiful book of its century, and a good part of its beauty is air. Text and woodcut sit in a column with generous room on every side. Early scribes left wide margins for the same reason readers later filled them. The page was meant to be answered. Readers added glosses, corrections, small drawings of hands pointing at the important bits, and occasionally complaints about the cold. The margin was where the book and the reader met.

Screens have mostly abandoned this. Text runs from edge to edge, or close to it, and there is nowhere to put a thought. I do not have a solution. But I notice that the pages I enjoy reading online, the ones I come back to, nearly always leave a little room.