Where have all the numbers gone
Oct. 12th, 2011 02:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threemonkeysJust read a book that didn't have page numbers. Not a comic or picture book but a full size paperback. It was just an oddness - a little disconcerting. Every time I picked the book up, I noticed the lack of numbers. Yet, despite the oddness, how many of us actually use the page numbers for anything except perhaps checking the last page to see how fat the volume we are considering reading is? But despite the lack of usefulness, all books are usually numbered. I'm thinking novels here of course - its a bit different with short story collections where a table of contents allows you to go to a specific story.
As it happens, there is an obvious explanation for the lack of numbers in the volume in question. It is an el-cheapo omnibus edition of three Agatha Cristie novels printed prior to the days of electronic typesetting. When joining the, already laid out, three books together the page numbering of each had to be removed. But because it was cheap edition, it wasn't worth the effort of re-numbering it. Simple, yet strange.
As it happens, there is an obvious explanation for the lack of numbers in the volume in question. It is an el-cheapo omnibus edition of three Agatha Cristie novels printed prior to the days of electronic typesetting. When joining the, already laid out, three books together the page numbering of each had to be removed. But because it was cheap edition, it wasn't worth the effort of re-numbering it. Simple, yet strange.