Powell’s has a great post on paper edges in the books you read. To trim the creeping or not to trim the creeping? Fore-edge as an art form. The deckle edges are quite something. Not sure how I’d feel about it in my potboiler lawnchair reader, or anything but chapbooks and that book of black magic spells I found in the graveyard, for that matter. Ahem. Um. You heard nothing.

Perhaps books, like cars, look so alike to most people that any unexpected detail only serves to confuse. But books, just like cars, come in many sizes, shapes, price ranges, and sometimes have elegant touches, even at the mega-publishing level.

Our geeked-out conversation about fore-edges led, of course, down the dark bibliographic road to the term “deckle edges.” John Carter defines the term as “the rough, untrimmed edges of a sheet of hand made paper….Much prized by collectors.”

Deckle is not merely “untrimmed.” It is sort of “untrimmed” on steroids.

I bet it cuts down on paper cuts though.