History Main / UnconventionalFormatting

[[folder:Fanfiction]]
* Used in ''Fanfic/{{Forward}}'' to illustrate River's unbalanced state of mind.
** "Riverthink" makes a guest appearance in ''Graveyard Shift'', by the same author, to depict the message of the Prothean Beacon.
* Whenever someone writes fanfic about a movie character that, ah, talks all . . . funny, like ''[[Film/TheDarkKnight Heath Ledger's Joker]]'', this, er, winds up ''happening''. [=aND don'T EvEn MentIon dElIrIUm.=]
** [=AnD tHeN tHeRe ArE tHe=] [[{{MST}} MsTiNgS]] [=wItH=] [[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 tOr]][[Film/ManosTheHandsOfFate Go]].

* "The Mouse's Tale" in ''[[Literature/AliceInWonderland Alice's Adventures in Wonderland]]'' winds down the page as if it were [[VisualPun a mouse's ''tail'']]

** ''Literature/TheFamiliar'' uses different fonts and layouts depending on the character who is the focus of the chapter - and there's plenty of unusual occurrences too, like words falling like raindrops, forests made out of # symbols or, most notably, animals shaped out of words and phrases describing them.

-->They tramped on through the day.
-->Tramp
--> Tramp
--> Tramp
--> Tramp
--> Tramp
-->They tramped on through the night.

-->D
-->o
-->w
-->n

A subtrope of PaintingTheMedium. Sometimes used in MetaFiction and [[ScrapbookStory Scrapbook Stories]]. If employed throughout a work it may be a kind of ConstrainedWriting. See also FootnoteFever (with which this sometimes overlaps), AllLowercaseLetters, NoPunctuationPeriod, RainbowSpeak, CensorBox, BoldInflation, ColorCodedForYourConvenience and PageTurnSurprise (when a CliffHanger's resolution is on the next page). InterfaceScrew is the VideoGame equivalent. May be used for TranslationPunctuation.

* In ''Of Their Shadows Deep'' the sentence "You Walk Down The Stone Steps Through The Trees To The Woods Below" is arranged like a staircase.

* In one of the books in the ''Literature/WaysideSchool'' series involved a student standing on his head. The text of one paragraph was flipped upside down.

* ''WebOriginal/SolarWind'' utilizes this everywhere. The story uses Discord's programmer formatting to convey its protagonist, Tav's, thoughts, as well as emojis to represent the voices of other characters.

The technical name for this is ergodic literature, from the Greek ''ergon'', meaning "work", and ''hodos'', meaning "path" - that is, formatting in which a non-trivial amount of work is required on the part of the reader to find a "path" through the text.

The technical name for this is ergodic literature, from the Greek ''ergon'', meaning "work", and ''hodos'', meaning "path" - that is, formatting in which a great deal of work is required on the part of the reader to find a "path" through the text.

A subtrope of PaintingTheMedium. Sometimes used in MetaFiction and [[ScrapbookStory Scrapbook Stories]]. If employed throughout a work it may be a kind of ConstrainedWriting. See also FootnoteFever (with which this sometimes overlaps), AllLowercaseLetters, NoPunctuationPeriod, RainbowSpeak, CensorBox, BoldInflation, ColorCodedForYourConvenience and PageTurnSurprise. InterfaceScrew is the VideoGame equivalent. May be used for TranslationPunctuation.

* Wiki/SCPFoundation has numerous articles where the typical format of database entries is [[InterfaceScrew disrupted]] by the InUniverse effects of the object involved. See [[PaintingTheMedium/SCPFoundation the Foundation's subpage on Painting the Medium]] for examples.

* ''Literature/{{Harsh Generation}}'' (inspired by 'Dhalgren'', above) features crossed-out sections, idiosyncratic punctuation, and sentences that stop abruptly, including the novel's closing line.

* James Dickey uses a black page in the middle of his poem "Apollo" to represent the astronauts' passing behind the moon and the consequent communications blackout until they returned.

* Creator/JasperFforde uses this a lot in the ''Literature/ThursdayNext'' books particularly. Justified in that much action takes place in the Book World, with eraser bullets that reduce literary characters to text, locations like the Text Sea, and so on.
** Fforde also uses this to graphically show what's happening in the text. Mycroft's Bookworms in ''[[Literature/ThursdayNext The Eyre Affair]]'' produce apostrophes' as a waste product, as well as amper&s, and when they get upset, they hyphen-ate. These marks show up in the text of the dialogue to illustrate this.

* ''In Search Of Adam'' by Caroline Smailes changes the placement of its words and shades of grey whenever Jude becomes obsessed over that thing in particular. For example when she's counting the words will zig-zag down the page.

* ''Literature/{{Harsh Generation}}'' (inspired by 'Dhalgren'', above) features crossed-out sections, idiosyncratic punctuation, and sentences that stop abruptly, including the novel's closing line.

* ''Literature/TristramShandy'' is probably the UrExample, including several unusual lines drawn to illustrate the "narrative line" of each volume and a completely black page after describing Parson Yorick's death.


* In ''Literature/TheThirteenAndAHalfLivesOfCaptainBluebear'', the character is approached by a giant spider. The onomatopoeia used to describe this approach is 'boom!' in constantly increasing letter size, until the word covers a complete page.

* ''Creator/PennAndTeller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends'' is printed in such a way that if you flip the pages front to back it's full of large fonted black print but if you flip it back to front it's full of tiny red print. This is used to trick your friend into believing that a special pair of cardboard specs (included) make things magically appear.
* ''The People Of Paper'' has an interesting one: some characters have the intrinsic ability to conceal their thoughts and actions ''from the author'', and others can do so by lining their hat or their house with lead. In-text, this shows up as [[CensorBox Censor Boxes]] over the concealed events (in some cases, entire pages of black).

* When Creator/SamuelRDelany's [=PoMo=] epic ''Literature/{{Dhalgren}}'' has the storyline branch, it doesn't follow one branch and then jump back to the other. Instead, both storylines are printed side-by-side in separate columns going down the page, often for dozens of pages, leaving it up to the reader to decide how best to absorb these simultaneous threads.

* Most books by Alasdair Gray will usually be normal formatted except for one section of it where the formatting goes so haywire as to make that section of the book unreadable (Gray most frequently uses the effect to represent one of his characters having a mental breakdown).

* In the setting of Creator/KJParker's novella "Purple and Black", purple ink is made from very rare and expensive ingredients and is nearly impossible to counterfeit, so it is [[PurpleIsPowerful reserved for Imperial missives]] to help verify their authenticity. The novella is an [[EpistolaryNovel Epistolary Story]] told through a series of back-and-forth letters between the Emperor and his top General. Appropriately, in the original printing of the novella, all of the Emperor's letters are printed in purple ink. (This is not the case for the version later printed in the ''Academic Exercises'' anthology, though.)

* "Die Trichter" (The Funnels) by Christian Morgenstern, in which the words are arranged in the shape of a funnel. (Surely the most widely known example, at least in Germany, but not the only one.)

* In ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'', Diane's magical charisma boost is initially indicated by using a distinctive unusual font whenever the spell is active.

* ''Lights in the Darkness'' - a story [[http://www.guildcompanion.com/scrolls/2002/feb/lights.html published]] in the Guild Companion, uses three different fonts of the same typeface to give a conversation of three people. Italic is a small child, the normal typeface is the granny and late in the story, the grandfather is depicted with bold letters.

* Used in ''Fanfic/{{Forward}}'' to illustrate River's unbalanced state of mind.
** "Riverthink" makes a guest appearance in ''Graveyard Shift'', by the same author, to depict the message of the Prothean Beacon.

** ''Literature/TheFiftyYearSword'' only features a small handful of words per page and coloured quotation marks to indicate who is speaking.
** ''Literature/TheFamiliar'' uses different fonts and layouts depending on the character who is the focus of the chapter - and there's plenty of unusual occurrences too, like words falling like raindrops, forests made out of # symbols or, most notably, animals shaped out of words and phrases describing them.
* ''Literature/{{Trainspotting}}'' uses slightly unusual textual layouts whilst the protagonist is [[spoiler:hallucinating due to heroin withdrawal]].
* Creator/StephenKing uses this from time to time: different fonts and typefaces, the intrusion of handwriting into typed text, and a device appearing in most of his works which makes use of italics, parentheses and sudden line breaks to represent character thoughts, as in this example from ''Literature/TheShining'':
--> The question was meant to be rhetorical, but his mind answered it
--> ''(you call it insanity)''
--> nevertheless.
* ''Literature/TristramShandy'' is probably the UrExample, including several unusual lines drawn to illustrate the "narrative line" of each volume and a completely black page after describing Parson Yorick's death.

* Creator/TerryPratchett uses this quite often:
** In ''Literature/{{Maskerade}}'' many readers were puzzled by a sentence fragment on the page, floating near the right margin saying "up here?". Near the bottom of the page a character is asked to demonstrate her skill in throwing her voice.
** In ''Literature/ReaperMan'' Death who is famous for speaking in ALL CAPS meets ''his'' boss, who speaks in "caps" so huge and bold they took up an entire page. Pratchett stated in interviews that he spent quite a bit of time arranging the prose so that this would happen on a [[PageTurnSurprise left hand page and thus be a surprise to the reader]]. (And then a miscommunication meant that this didn't happen in the paperback, even though he'd written another scene so it would.) ''Reaper Man'' also uses two different typefaces for the A story and B story.
** When the god Om regains his strength at the end of ''Literature/SmallGods'', he speaks with chapter and verse numbers inserted between his sentences.
** Golems speak, or initially write, in a typeface suggestive of the Hebrew alphabet. What they write is also suspiciously Yiddish in intonation and vocabulary.
* In ''Literature/TheCityOfDreamingBooks'', right after the villain is revealed, he hands the main character a book which will "answer all his questions" on page 333. As he flips through the book, all pages are completely blank until he gets to page 333. The next two pages of the novel are completely filled with tiny letters that only say [[spoiler:''"[[FingerLickingPoison You just have been poisoned]]. You just have been poisoned. You just have been poisoned. You just have been poisoned..."'']] The next two pages of the novel are completely printed black with only a few words in white letters describing [[spoiler:how he falls unconscious]]. You probably have to squint a bit and move the book close to your face to read it.
* In ''Literature/TheThirteenAndAHalfLivesOfCaptainBluebear'', the character is approached by a giant spider. The onomatopoesia used to descripe this apporach is 'boom!' in constantly increasing letter size, until the word covers a complete page.
* ''Literature/TheDemolishedMan'' and ''Literature/TheStarsMyDestination'' use unusual type layout to depict telepathic conversations (sentences trailing down a page and interweaving like braids; a party game where the image formed by the words is a kind of charade clue).
* In a style reminiscent of Creator/EECummings, the novel ''Crank'' uses this on every page, with each chapter using a different format from the previous one. Its most prominent usage is in the use of space; the book is over five hundred pages long and takes a matter of hours to read.
** The two sequels to ''Crank'' and the rest of Ellen Hopkins's subsequent books follow the same formatting style.
* ''Literature/GoodOmens'' mentions about a million styles of typography used for the title and multiple subtitles of Agnes Nutter's "nice and accurate" book of prophecies.
** Though if you've seen the title pages of sufficiently old books, you'll know this is TruthInTelevision.
* Creator/JasperFforde uses this a lot in the ''Literature/ThursdayNext'' books particularly. Justified in that much action takes place in the Book World, with eraser bullets that reduce literary characters to text, locations like the Text Sea, and so on.
** Fforde also uses this to graphically show what's happening in the text. Mycroft's Bookworms in ''[[Literature/ThursdayNext The Eyre Affair]]'' produce apostrophes' as a waste product, as well as amper&s, and when they get upset, they hyphen-ate. These marks show up in the text of the dialogue to illustrate this.
* Parodied in one of the Creator/MontyPython books where there's a self-referential page of coloured letters on a black background.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_poetry Concrete poetry]] is a poetic genre based around this trope.
* ''In Search Of Adam'' by Caroline Smailes changes the placement of its words and shades of grey whenever Jude becomes obsessed over that thing in particular. For example when she's counting the words will zig-zag down the page.
* ''Creator/PennAndTeller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends'' is printed in such a way that if you flip the pages front to back it's full of large fonted black print but if you flip it back to front it's full of tiny red print. This is used to trick your friend into believing that a special pair of cardboard specs (included) make things magically appear.
* ''The People Of Paper'' has an interesting one: some characters have the intrinsic ability to conceal their thoughts and actions ''from the author'', and others can do so by lining their hat or their house with lead. In-text, this shows up as [[CensorBox Censor Boxes]] over the concealed events (in some cases, entire pages of black).

** And for that matter, Harlan ''himself'' has used the technique in a few stories. (Examples include "Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes," "Literature/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream" and "The Deathbird," among others.)
* The foreword to Kurt Vonnegut's ''Literature/SlaughterhouseFive'' is formatted to resemble a silhouette of a bomb.
* "The Mouse's Tale" in ''[[Literature/AliceInWonderland Alice's Adventures in Wonderland]]'' winds down the page as if it were [[VisualPun a mouse's ''tail'']]

* In one of the books in the ''Literature/WaysideSchool'' series involved a student standing on his head. The text of one paragraph was flipped upside down.

* James Dickey's uses a black page in the middle of his poem "Apollo" to represent the astronauts' passing behind the moon and the consequent communications blackout until they returned.
* ''Literature/ExtremelyLoudAndIncrediblyClose'' does this. Some words are circled in red, and entire pages are left blank, among other things.

* ''Literature/{{Harsh Generation}}'', inspired by Dhalgren, features crossed-out sections, idiosyncrating punctuation, and sentences that stop abruptly, including the novel's closing line.

* ''Literature/{{Mayfear}}''
** The cryptic text messages that the protagonist receives from "(Withheld)" are represented using distorted characters.
** At other points the text is arranged unusually on the screen, using centre-formatting and other techniques.

* In ''Literature/TheCrewOfTheCopperColoredCupids'' print stories, [[EldritchAbomination Lord Thymon]]'s speech is rendered in bold and alternating lower- and uppercase, '''LiKe ThIs''', in order to emphasises his eldritch nature. On a few occasions, other "interdimensional" sounds or happenings have been marked out by typographical oddities, such as enormous, ''rainbow-coloured'' text to render the "sound" of something ripping through the fabric of reality.

[[center: [[superscript:A literary trope]] in which the text is arranged on the page in strange ways, including but not limited to: tfel-ot-thgir (ni nrestseW skrow), bottom-to-top, reversed, uʍop-ǝpᴉsdn etc.]] It can also make use of [[color:red:colours]], [[AC:multiple UsefulNotes/{{Fonts}}]] and other @@typographical tricks of this nature.@@