Mark Barratt talks about how the typography of marginalia – footnotes, glosses and asides – evolved. From the 2013 ATypI conference in Amsterdam.
The typography of marginalia – footnotes, glosses and asides – evolved rapidly after the development of printing from movable type. It systemised the business of scholarship and survives although often in a degraded form today in thoughtful print publishing. Electronic media have generally not handled marginalia well. This presentation summarises the historical legacy in print and examines ways in which electronic media – particularly on the web and in e-books – are trying to replicates the functions of marginalia in new visual forms and with new, shared, annotation standards.