A conversation took place in the car today while dropping off some library books about ‘dog-earing’ book pages. If you’re unfamiliar with that term, an official sounding definition might be “the act of folding down a corner of a book so as to mark a page”. An unofficial definition (offered by yours truly) would be “the act of permanently marking a book’s page to allow the lazy reader of said book to do so without using a bookmark, string, or other non-defacing device.”
A little extreme? Well, I guess I’m a little OCD about it…
You see, my wife is a perpetual dog-earer. (New word alert!) Despite my best efforts to the contrary, she has taught our children by example to do the same and it’s a pretty safe bet she’ll continue to do so herself into the future. I’m in the minority in my family, but my thinking is thus: if you bend that page, it’s bent forever. You can flatten it out, sure, but the crease will always be there.
I hear most of you right now saying, “So…?”
Yeah, I guess I’m the weird one about this.
I think it’s a pet peeve of mine because I’m a collector at heart, and things being in mint condition for some reason is important to me. My family used to buy and sell cards and comics, so it’s been instilled in me from an early age. Dinged corners, yellowed pages, tears, and marks are a big no-no. That being said, I know full well that a paperback novel is probably never going to be worth anything…
Now it’s my turn to say, “So!”
Old habits die hard, and I’ll probably never change. So far it seems my children will not share my ‘concerns’ (read: OCD-ness). No matter your opinion on dog-earing, I’m sure we can all agree that is definitely better for everyone involved.
Just not so much for the books they read.
