Post
by polymath » July 15th, 2011, 8:14 am
A leap from music to prose isn't so far of a stretch as might seem on its surface. Nor too far from lyrics' poetry to prose either. The pattern or metric foot of everyday English is typically unstressed, stressed syllable. Iamb or iambic. And the ideal prose line width is roughly ten idealized words or sixty-five glyphs including word spaces. Thus iambic pentameter, which readily translates to lyrics. Standard manuscript format, in other words. Publication formats are a little more cramped to facilitate reading ease for proprotionally spaced typefaces, nor by any means uniform word counts.
We think, speak, and read poetry when we compose prose. Other meters are more identifiable as poetry because they're not everyday, all day, all the time rhythms. Disjunct and inharmonious meter can be unsettling or if timely and judicious create stress and therefore tension just by the words' pronunciations, let alone their contexts.
Pentameter because human vision sees and takes in five idealized words per eye blink at comfortable reading distance. Reading two eye blinks per line facilitates maximum reading ease. And favors a comfortable reading pace.
Two eye blinks per line is standard because page dimensions represent a visual aesthetic comparable to the Golden Proportion, in one sense, which is roughly 1:1.62. Thus a six by nine inches portrait orientation page standard for casecover and trade paperback publication formats, and 8 1/2 by 11 inches for letter-sized paper manuscript formats. A-4 paper, the international letter size standard, however, has an aspect ratio based on the square root of 2, or roughly 1:1.42. Close enough to not impede reading ease.
Paper sizes are more than just poetry for the eye. They're reflections of the proportions of human faces, which are aesthetically pleasing to the eye and mind seeking order in chaos. Since page sizes are pleasing, they don't call attention to themselves and disappear when reading a particularly engaging narrative. Note illustration publication and photograph sizes follow the same proportions. Disproportionate paper sizes and line widths are unsettling and impede reading, consciously or not. e-reader designers and digital page layouts haven't yet recognized that phenomena to its full extent.
A listing of meters below, each with different emotional contexts and purposes. Cueing ominous music? Consider dactyl or anapest. Trisyllable poetry creates more tension than disyllable. Trisyllable poetry is more common in music for the syllable quantity twelve's, hexameter, divisibility by two, three, four, and six.
And no, I'm not ugleek by any means, though I'm often taken for one. Gimme enough leverage and I could shift a mountain to Mohammed. I mean, I'm not just about theory but about practical implementation as well.
Disyllables
pyrrhus, dibrach
iamb
trochee, choree
spondee
Trisyllables
tribrach
dactyl
amphibrach
anapest, antidactylus
bacchius
antibacchius
cretic, amphimacer
molossus
Last edited by
polymath on July 15th, 2011, 10:02 am, edited 2 times in total.
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