More thoughts on margins

Yesterday I grumbled about the margins in a document created in Sigil.

I remember going to a talk by Dave Eggers where he said that he quite likes to write in Quark Xpress – a page layout program – because he likes to see “how it will look.”

By "it" he meant the final piece.

I can really appreciate that. For example, I often write these blog posts in Bloggers's editor (though sometimes I do write drafts in Microsoft Word first.) Blogger provides an HTML editor (HTML, Courier font) as well as a more WYSIWYG Compose editor, and a Preview window (in which you can’t edit.) All three present a document in very different ways, and none looks like the document as it appears when it’s published on the blog.

Apart from the fact that blockquotes and lists space out very differently from one to another, and the fonts are different in all three, I frequently find myself reading pieces again after they are "published", and making additional changes and corrections. There’s something about the final layout which causes me to make more changes.

I don't know what it is. I should be able to find spelling mistakes and other problems when editing in any "text" format; should the presentation really make a difference? Or is it just that the change in presentation arouses my interest in some way?

Editing in Blogger; Compose mode (top) Preview mode (bottom left)
and actual blog (bottom right)