Creating the InDesign document

Six translations is substantial!

I considered a few different modalities of presentation:

• columns
• grouped paragraphs
• grouped lines

I think columnar layout would give the best opportunity for easily cross-referencing translations line-by-line.

Columnar layout.

Sizing

I needed it to be readable, so I was aiming for 12pt font. Going any narrower than 2” wide-columns is going to be unreadable at 12pt font. There also needs to be some gutter between columns, to make it clearer which is which.

If we did all 6 translations on a single page, that would look like:

| 11111 22222 33333 44444 55555 66666 |
| 11111 22222 33333 44444 55555 66666 |
| 11111 22222 33333 44444 55555 66666 |
| 11111 22222 33333 44444 55555 66666 |

This looks like a landscape orientation. Measuring widths:

|   2"    2"    2"    2"    2"    2"  |
| 11111 22222 33333 44444 55555 66666 |
|.5"  .5"   .5"   .5"   .5"   .5"  .5"|
| 11111 22222 33333 44444 55555 66666 |

(2 * 6) + (0.5 * 7) = 12 + 3.5 = 15.5”

15.5” is larger, by quite a margin, than a standard US Letter (8.5x11”) paper. I know that my local print shop can also do 11x17” prints. That would allow for a slightly wider column, as well:

|  2.5"  2.5"  2.5"  2.5"  2.5"  2.5" |
| 11111 22222 33333 44444 55555 66666 |
|.5"  .5"   .5"   .5"   .5"   .5"  .5"|
| 11111 22222 33333 44444 55555 66666 |

(2.5 * 6) + (0.285 * 7) = 15 + 1.99 = 16.99”

That’s close enough.

6x 2.5” columns per page, with 0.285” gutters.

Create master layout

In InDesign, I created a master layout using those dimensions. I made a few simple styles for headings and body copy. Wythe suggested adding the translation author names to the top of the columns, as well. I did that and also the translation year.

Time to ingest!