1 Topic by Alfred (edited by Alfred 2022-01-30 17:01:49)

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Topic: Including an original poem in a greetings card

William wrote:

Also, I don't know whether you would want to do this, but you could if you wish produce a greetings card with the poem on the front, and instead of the greeting inside, your name and the date, then send it to yourself.

Here is a link to the template.

https://www.papier.com/portrait-photo-315

The purchaser replaces the image with an image of his or her choice.
The purchaser changes the greeting inside to his or her choice. Various fonts are available. For one card I got twenty-one lines of text in Garamond instead of the greeting, namely sixteen lines of a poem, and a description and my name and the month and year, together with space after the poem and before the description.

Here is the website.

https://www.papier.com/

One needs to register to order a card, but it is free and I have made aroud a dozen cards there and sent them to myself and framed them with frames from Tesco delivered with my grocery orders.

The cards are £3.50 plus 85p postage.

Nicely printed and a matt finish, so less than twice what a non-customised card of similar quality would cost in the shops.

One needs to send a jpg file.

I worked in pixels at 2171 pixels high by 1571 pixels wide at 300 dots per inch; that gives a bit of sideways play.

The size is, mixed units, 7 inches tall by 5 inches wide, with a 3 millimetre wide bleed area on each edge, though only three of them get chopped off.

Best to leave a bit of white background space above the text, which I prefer to be typeset in a text frame, not as artistic text, and a bigger bit of white background space below the text.

The image could just be of text, or there could be coloured decoration too.

The poem is, including blank lines between verses, twenty-four lines.

So with space above and below, twenty-four lines needs to fit into about five inches vertically.

So what point size?

Electronic type size tends to be meaured as height above the base line rather than overall height as is done with metal type printing.

So some trying out needed.

But needing about five lines per inch, so maybe fourteen point or perhaps twelve point.

Which font? Upright or italic, or a script font?

Well, that is an author's choice and depending also what the author has available or could have available after a free download from Google fonts.

So no suggestion from me so as not to influence the author's choice.

William

"Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?"
― Tennessee Williams
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Re: Including an original poem in a greetings card

William wrote:

I worked in pixels at 2171 pixels high by 1571 pixels wide at 300 dots per inch; that gives a bit of sideways play.

The size is, mixed units, 7 inches tall by 5 inches wide, with a 3 millimetre wide bleed area on each edge, though only three of them get chopped off.

If the document size is specified in inches, the standard bleed amount is 1/8 inch: the 3 mm quoted here is the metric equivalent. If you’re adding 1/4 inch to the overall dimensions, that’s 75 pixels at 300 ppi, so the finished size in pixels should be 2175 by 1575.

However, if you really need a bleed area, you might as well let the program handle the details for you! (Spoiler: You don’t need a bleed area for plain text on a white background.)

"Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?"
― Tennessee Williams
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Re: Including an original poem in a greetings card

William wrote:

Which font? Upright or italic, or a script font?
Well, that is an author's choice and depending also what the author has available or could have available after a free download from Google fonts.

Other sources of free fonts are available (e.g. DaFont and FontSpace). Some commercial fonts include a few free styles, but you usually need to register with the font vendor in order to ‘purchase’ them.

"Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?"
― Tennessee Williams
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Re: Including an original poem in a greetings card

Alfred wrote:

Other sources of free fonts are available (e.g. DaFont and FontSpace).

Here are a few more:

Font Library

Font River

Font Squirrel

SIL Font Downloads

SofterViews Fonts

typOasis

"Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?"
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Re: Including an original poem in a greetings card

Alfred wrote:
William wrote:

I worked in pixels at 2171 pixels high by 1571 pixels wide at 300 dots per inch; that gives a bit of sideways play.

The size is, mixed units, 7 inches tall by 5 inches wide, with a 3 millimetre wide bleed area on each edge, though only three of them get chopped off.

If the document size is specified in inches, the standard bleed amount is 1/8 inch: the 3 mm quoted here is the metric equivalent. If you’re adding 1/4 inch to the overall dimensions, that’s 75 pixels at 300 ppi, so the finished size in pixels should be 2175 by 1575.

However, if you really need a bleed area, you might as well let the program handle the details for you! (Spoiler: You don’t need a bleed area for plain text on a white background.)

Well the document for a Papier card is not specified in inches but miliimetres, yet it is the equivalent of 7 inches by 5 inches. A 3 millimetre bleed area is advisable, yet the Papier system is quite tolerant of what is uploaded and will scale and crop if needed.

The Tesco oak effect frame for a 7 inches by 5 inches photograph that I bought about a year ago is no longer available (but there is a replacement type, though I have not bought any of them), had the aperture in the mount a bit smaller so that a bit of the picture goes behind the mount.

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/p … /308622501

The Papier card mentioned is said to have dimensions of

127mm x 177.8mm

However I tend to use the larger frames and have a white area behind the card, so the mount is more like a decorative border.

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/p … /308622478

William

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Re: Including an original poem in a greetings card

Alfred wrote:
jackneve wrote:

I had the notion that we could have a thread devoted to the literary arts - more the literature rather than the mechanism.

A good point well made, as they say! I’m afraid I’m all too prone to following a thread where it leads. Perhaps I should split the off-topic posts to a new thread.

Yes, a thread with a title such as

On the possibility of producing a greetings card that displays the text of an original poem

and in the first post you could provide a link to the thread that contains Jack's poem and say that the new thread is a spin-off thread that commenced by moving some posts that were originally made in the poem thread.

William

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Re: Including an original poem in a greetings card

William:

On the possibility of producing a greetings card that displays the text of an original poem

William can't you KISS - keep it stupid simple?
A simpler title:
Include a poem in a greetings card.

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Re: Including an original poem in a greetings card

jackneve wrote:

William:

On the possibility of producing a greetings card that displays the text of an original poem

William can't you KISS - keep it stupid simple?
A simpler title:
Include a poem in a greetings card.

Perhaps William was trying to keep it literary, like ‘A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig’. https://punster.me/images/phpbb3/smilies/eusa/think.gif

"Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?"
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Re: Including an original poem in a greetings card

jackneve wrote:

William:

On the possibility of producing a greetings card that displays the text of an original poem

William can't you KISS - keep it stupid simple?
A simpler title:
Include a poem in a greetings card.

Ah, but the rudeness accompanying the altered version has curtailed discussion by using offensiveness.

Your version uses an imperative verb and the abbreviated title could imply breaching someone's copyright.

I was most careful in the precision of my wording.

Your sub-editing has distorted the meaning of my suggested title.

Hopefully the administrator will use my suggested title rather than the edited lesser version.

William

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Re: Including an original poem in a greetings card

William wrote:

the rudeness accompanying the altered version

I believe the KISS acronym is too much of a cliché for most people to read it as rude.

William wrote:

Your version uses an imperative verb and the abbreviated title could imply breaching someone's copyright.

I don’t think the imperative mood implies anything that wouldn’t be implied by the use of a gerund, but I take your point about the omission of the word “original” and I’ve edited the topic title accordingly.

"Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?"
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Re: Including an original poem in a greetings card

Alfred wrote:
William wrote:

the rudeness accompanying the altered version

I believe the KISS acronym is too much of a cliché for most people to read it as rude.

William wrote:

Your version uses an imperative verb and the abbreviated title could imply breaching someone's copyright.

I don’t think the imperative mood implies anything that wouldn’t be implied by the use of a gerund, but I take your point about the omission of the word “original” and I’ve edited the topic title accordingly.

Thank you. How about changing

Include

to

On including

please?

Still shorter than my original suggestion but removing the imperative of ordering someone to do it.

William

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Re: Including an original poem in a greetings card

William wrote:

How about changing
Include
to
On including
please?
Still shorter than my original suggestion but removing the imperative of ordering someone to do it.

On reflection, I wonder if ‘Include’ here isn’t really just shorthand for ‘To include’, rather than being an imperative. That aside, I see nothing wrong with changing ‘Include’ to ‘Including’.

"Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?"
― Tennessee Williams
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Re: Including an original poem in a greetings card

Alfred wrote:
William wrote:

How about changing
Include
to
On including
please?
Still shorter than my original suggestion but removing the imperative of ordering someone to do it.

On reflection, I wonder if ‘Include’ here isn’t really just shorthand for ‘To include’, rather than being an imperative. That aside, I see nothing wrong with changing ‘Include’ to ‘Including’.

Thank you.

William

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Re: Including an original poem in a greetings card

In the context, KISS is in no way scatological or obscene. It may be offensive only to the poor recipient of the advice being told his work is over elaborate.

It is widely used in the engineering world, and is a useful maxim for everyone trying to communicate. It is often used when a complicated solution has been found to a problem, and the resulting thing or process maybe exceeds the constraints available.
Surely, in the example

On the possibility of producing a greetings card that displays the text of an original poem

is unnecessarily verbose, and the essence of the title is contained in the suggested 

Include a poem in a greetings card.

   with no diminution of meaning except the unnecessary  "original."

It has limited application in the literary world, where style is significant.

BTW I believe it means Keep It Simple Stupid, not the other way round.

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Re: Including an original poem in a greetings card

William wrote:
Alfred wrote:
William wrote:

How about changing
Include
to
On including
please?
Still shorter than my original suggestion but removing the imperative of ordering someone to do it.

On reflection, I wonder if ‘Include’ here isn’t really just shorthand for ‘To include’, rather than being an imperative. That aside, I see nothing wrong with changing ‘Include’ to ‘Including’.

Thank you.

William

You’re welcome.

"Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?"
― Tennessee Williams
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Re: Including an original poem in a greetings card

jackneve wrote:

In the context, KISS is in no way scatological or obscene.

I don’t believe anyone has suggested that it’s either of those two things! https://punster.me/images/ohmy.gif

"Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?"
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Re: Including an original poem in a greetings card

Alfred wrote:

I don’t believe anyone has suggested that it’s either of those two things!

William seems offended by it. It wasn't meant to.