The Triptych

Portrait of Elaine Thompson with her original "triptych treatise"

The triptych, or pamphlet book as it is sometimes called, is a type of book of Writhaven origin wherein a third block of pages is attached beside the original two. This third section commonly contains supplemental information to the main text such as a glossary, data tables, maps, or footnotes. The design was first developed by famed essayist Elaine Thompson in 857 VTE for her work Treatise on the Canonical Concentration of Chuubanite which urged the Canon to make their chuubanite stores more widely available for use by researchers and the general public as well as in industrial applications. Curiosity over the nonstandard binding is thought to have greatly contributed to word of the issue spreading all throughout Writhaven and the government was later pressured to establish several chuubanite regulation reforms as a result. According to Thompson, however, her motives in creating the triptych were only to make it easier to cross-reference the main body of text and additional notes side-by-side without having to resort to printing them as separate volumes. This "book and a half" style of binding has been criticized by some as being too unwieldy and impractical to justify its perceived usefulness, but the unusually shaped tomes have nonetheless found a small degree of popularity in Writhaven. One niche in which these are becoming more and more commonplace is the academic sector, where they have even seen some adoption by the university libraries of other nations.

Side-bound triptych with each section of the cover color-coded to illustrate how it folds shut

Edit
Pub: 21 Oct 2022 08:14 UTC
Views: 103