Materiality

Texts that alert us to their materiality go against much of that we have been taught especially the standards for textbooks. Textbooks aren’t focused on materiality per se but as the information that the text displays. It is really only meant for educational purposes. For these exact reasons is why you see a lot of college students snoozing and wiping the drool off of their college textbooks. Informative textbooks with no materiality are boring, but they seem to get to the point. The standard sizes for these texts are 8 ½ x 11 with a 12-point typeface and usually a font of Arial, Helvetica, or Times New Roman. The reason why there are standard sizes and fonts for typefaces are because of legibility reasons. The 12-point font yields for faster reading speeds and it is the size preferred by a wide range of users. As far as the standard size of paper, the determination that paper should be the size that is if it can be divided into two equal halves parallel to its shortest sides, then the halves will fold again equally. There is a mathematical system involved in the size of paper. Also there are different standard sizes for different countries.