History Main / UnconventionalFormatting

** In ''Literature/ReaperMan'' Death who is famous for speaking in [[AC: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]]. ''Reaper Man'' also uses two different typefaces for the A story and B story.

** In ''Discworld/{{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 ''Discworld/ReaperMan'' Death who is famous for speaking in [[AC: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]]. ''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 ''Discworld/SmallGods'', he speaks with chapter and verse numbers inserted between his sentences.

* Wiki/SCPFoundation has numerous articles where the typical format of database entries is [[InterfaceScrew disrupted]] by the InUniverse effects of the object involved.

** Fforde also uses this to graphically show what's happening in the text. Mycroft's Bookworms in ''[[Literature/ThursdayNext TheEyre 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.

* Another "black page" one, similar to the use in ''Literature/TristramShandy'' above, is James Dickey's use of 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/TheDemolishedMan'' uses 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).
** ''Literature/TheStarsMyDestination'' by the same author uses this trope as well.

* ''WebOriginal/LightsInTheDarkness'' - 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.

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

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** And for that matter, Harlan ''himself'' has used the technique in a few stories ("Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes", "Literature/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream", and "The Deathbird" among others).

** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettels_Traum Zettels Traum]], Arno Schmidt's valiant (German-language) attempt at imitating the above has much of the same: multiple columns (frequently switching sides), '''very''' idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation throughout, as well as handwritten notes and blacked-out words, sentences or paragraphs (though to be fair, the novel was published as a facsimile version of the original typoscript, which the author never got around to preparing for print).

* A favourite device of Creator/EECummings, as can be seen [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TheDialJan1920-Cummingspoem.jpg here]].

* The foreword to Kurt Vonnegut's ''SlaughterhouseFive'' is formatted to resemble a silhouette of a bomb.

** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettels_Traum Zettels Traum]], Arno Schmidt's valiant (German-language[[note]]and utterly untranslatable[[/note]]) attempt at imitating the above has much of the same: multiple columns (frequently switching sides), '''very''' idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation throughout, as well as handwritten notes and blacked-out words, sentences or paragraphs (though to be fair, the novel was published as a facsimile version of the original typoscript, which the author never got around to preparing for print).

** ''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 or making up the shape of a clock.

[[center: [[superscript:A literary trope]] in which the text is arranged on the page in strange ways, including but not limited to: (skrow nretseW ni) tfel-ot-thgir, 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.@@

[[center: [[superscript:A literary trope]] in which the text is arranged on the page in strange ways, including but not limited to: (skorw nertseW ni) tfel-ot-thgir, 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.@@

[[center: [[superscript:A literary trope]] in which the text is arranged on the page in strange ways, including but not limited to: right-to-left (in Western works), 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.@@

[[center: [[superscript:A literary trope]] in which the text is arranged on the page in strange ways, including but not limited to: right-to-left (in Western works), bottom-to-top, reversed, upside-down etc.]] It can also make use of [[color:red:colours]], [[AC:multiple UsefulNotes/{{Fonts}}]] and other @@typographical tricks of this nature.@@

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. May be used for TranslationPunctuation.

* Wiki/SCPFoundation has numerous articles where the typical format is [[InterfaceScrew disrupted]] by the InUniverse effects of the object involved.

* Another "black page" one, similar to the use in TristramShandy above, is Creator/JamesDickey's use of 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.

* Another "black page" one, similar to the use in TristramShandy above, is James Dickey's use 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/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..

* Website/TimeCube changes the font, font size, usage of italics, etc. every single segment of the page. It also uses red and/or blue colored text fairly regularly, with occasionally other colors - the effect is dizzying.

* In the [[Literature/RedDwarf ''Red Dwarf'' novel]] ''Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers'', a lengthy elevator ride down through the spaceship ''Red Dwarf'''s cargo levels is conveyed by repeating the word "down" almost every other line, until finally it appears written with each letter on a separate line: