Writing Within the Lines By Aviva Weiser and Gabby Gallardo

As I furiously scribbled the last sentence of my in-class AP Literature essay and turned it in, I looked over at the person sitting next to me. Gabby had also finished her essay, but her writing stopped at the margin rather than writing to the end of the page (depicted to the right). Of course, I was scandalized, and we debated the issue, so here is my side of the argument.

There are multiple reasons why this is not correct (in my opinion), first of which being that that margin is not intentionally placed there. It is just ink that has bled through from the other side of the paper, where it does actually serve a purpose. This writing style relies on the fact that this line is intentional, but it isn’t. It is meant to be seen on the other side, and the other side only.

In addition, writing to the end, with a margin of roughly 9.5 x 1.25 inches, means that 12.38 square inches overall are conserved. This area is 13% of the total paper! It is simply wasteful not to conserve paper and utilize this area when it is so prudent to do so. This is an environmental issue, and one with a solution we can implement both rapidly and without struggle.

While some might argue that the image of a symmetric piece of paper is more valuable than the environment, remember that lined paper is already not symmetric because of the hole punches which further clarify how lined paper is not intended to be symmetric, it’s intended to be an efficient communicator of information, which hole punches help with in terms of transportability, but including the margin makes it less efficient.

Be on the right side of history and conserve paper while simultaneously ignoring a meaningless line that was intended to be ignored.

Side 2:

It was a normal day in AP Lit class. I was sitting next to Aviva while we were scrambling to finish our essays about father-son relationships. I looked over to my side and noticed Aviva’s paper was off - not her writing, but her lack of respecting margins. The sight I witnessed scarred me for life. Like any normal person, when I write on lined paper, I stop at the light red margin on the right side of the paper. So I was shocked when I saw that Aviva was writing to the very edge of the page.

To first understand why it is practically criminal to continue writing past the margins, one first has to understand the history of margins. Margins became popular at a time when rodents were often found chewing on important documents and books. I hope the rat that ate the 95 Theses enjoyed its snack! Before the advent of computers, rodents consuming the edges of books was a significant problem. The solution? To implement margins at the top, bottom, and sides of the papers, this way if a roden decided to eat some of a book, it wouldn’t be eating the actual writing in the book, but instead blank margins. These margins were carried on to notebooks and computers later on. If this rodent problem was still around, the rodents wouldn’t be able to eat my AP Lit essays, but they would be chowing down on Aviva’s quote chunks.

Additionally, margins lines also allow the reader to focus on what is written on the paper. With margins, readers don’t have to worry about the writing going off of the page and can better comprehend what they are reading. As an additional bonus, margins allow the reader to leave notes about scoring on the paper!

Although we no longer have a rapacious rodent problem, keeping writing within the margin is still an important practice, as it allows for comprehension and writing room.