{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.021164021164021163, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0008818342151675485, 'mean_word_length': 5.202185792349726, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
‘This Page Intentionally Left Blank’; or, the Apophatic Page

Chapter 1 explores how readers interact with and interpret blank space and blank spaces on the early modern page. This is the beginning of this chapter’s enquiry into the ways in which practical typography came to be seen as creative opportunity, for writers as well as readers, and how modern editorial treatment elides that creativity. Part I focuses on the interactive reader generally as he/she is faced with items that invite filling in: incomplete rubrication in incunabula, errata lists, blanks for topical and personal references, initials for names, censorship. Part II covers literary works that exploit gaps and incompletion from the disingenuous ‘desunt nonnulla’ through metrical half-lines, incomplete quotations and gaps in collaborative manuscripts to direct addresses to the reader to fill in blank space left for their use. This section also reviews blanks in different media such as sculpture and cartography. Part III shows how editors treat blanks in print editions and digital books, exploring literary material from the medieval to the early modern.