Chapter VI
The Margins.
Good prose leaves places to stop. A footnote is a door; a margin note a window; a citation a handshake with the dead. Nous is, above all, a system for editorial affordances — the small ways a page makes room for the reader's hand.
§1 · Marginalia
A voice outside the voice.
A margin note is not a footnote. A footnote is a part of the argument set aside; a margin note is another voice in the same room. It may belong to the author (a second thought) or to a later reader (an annotation). Nous gives the gutter to this voice, not because it is less important, but because it is of a different register.
On desktop, margin notes live in a 240-pixel column to the right of the reading measure. Below 1024 pixels, they fold inline, set as a small block-quote immediately after the paragraph they mark.
Heraclitus is supposed to have said that one cannot step into the same river twice. The line is nearly always quoted as if it were a small poetry about impermanence. It is stranger than that.
The river, in his argument, is not an illustration of becoming — it is a case of it. What a river is, is the running. To ask whether the water is the same is to have asked the wrong question; the river is made of its running, not of its water.
§2 · Highlights
Three colours, three meanings.
A highlight is a sentence one has met twice — a mark left to find it again. Nous allows three, each with a meaning. They are not decorative; they are semantic. A reader who keeps to the convention will later read their own marks as if they were writing to themselves.
Of the faculties, three concern us. The first is reason — the part that argues, which is also the part that is loudest. The second is spirit — the part that defends, which one does not often admit to. The third, nearest to Nous, is appetite — the part that wants, which, uneducated, pulls the others behind it.
Ochre · Note
A sentence worth remembering.
The reader's first mark — the one that says, this is the line I came for.
Aegean · Question
A sentence that wants an answer.
Where one would ask the author, if one could, to say what exactly is meant.
Terracotta · Dispute
A sentence one might answer back.
The hardest to re-read without revising — and therefore the one most worth preserving.
§3 · Footnotes
The door that opens at the threshold.
A footnote that requires the reader to leave the page and find it at the bottom is a footnote half used. Nous shows the note where the mark is, on hover or focus, as a small popover — the argument paused for a breath, not broken.
The popover rises in 400ms (--dur-slow), dismisses on mouse-leave or blur. Keyboard users receive it via focus, arrow keys, and Escape. The traditional bottom-of-page footnote is preserved and linkable — the popover is the additional, not the replacement.
Aristotle's argument against the separability of form1See Metaphysics, Ζ.13 — the argument against Platonic forms as separate substances. Aristotle is not refuting Plato; he is refining the question. begins as an ordinary noticing and ends as a small revolution. One cannot, he says, have the form of triangle standing in some other room from the triangles — there is no other room2Hover again on the mark above — the popover carries the note without removing the reader from the sentence..
Accessibility: the popover surfaces on :hover, :focus-within, and by keyboard tab. The underlying footnote remains in the DOM as an id-linked list at the foot of the article, for screen readers and print.
§4 · Citation
A handshake with the dead.
A citation is not a decoration; it is a promise that the thought has a source, and that the reader may follow. Nous renders four styles competently. Pick one; keep it. The style is yours — the rendering is Nous's.
Inline · Parenthetical
The river is made of its running (Heraclitus, DK 22 B49a), which is to say of what has just passed through it.
Note · Chicago
The form of a thing is not separate from the thing3Aristotle, Metaphysics, Ζ.13, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, 1984), 2:1638..
Blockquote · with cite
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
— Aristotle · Nicomachean Ethics · II.1
MLA · In-text
"The unexamined life is not worth living" (Plato 38a), Socrates is supposed to have said at his trial.
§5 · Bibliography
At the end of the room, a shelf.
The bibliography is the shelf at the end of the reading. Set in hanging indent, with the author small-capped and the title in italic — the reader-friendly academic form. Nothing about it should compete with the prose that led here.
- Metaphysics. Translated by W. D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon, 1924.
- The Elements of Typographic Style. 4th ed. Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 2013.
- Fragments. Edited by T. M. Robinson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987.
- The Last Days of Socrates. Translated by Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant. London: Penguin Classics, 1993.
- The Form of the Book. Edited by Hajo Hadeler. Point Roberts, WA: Hartley & Marks, 1991.
§6 · TOC Rail
A map in the margin.
The table-of-contents rail is the only chapter-nav affordance Nous adds. It sits in the right gutter on wide viewports (≥1280px) and lists the current chapter's sections. As the reader scrolls, the current section is marked with a terracotta tick on the left — an IntersectionObserver decides which.
Below 1280px the rail collapses inline, under the chapter folio, as a row of horizontal pills. Below 640px it becomes a tappable row — no hover reveal, no fixed position, just a quick jump.
It is the only nav Nous adds within a chapter. The top bar is for jumping between chapters; the rail is for jumping within. The prev/next at the foot is for reading straight through.
See this rail in action: the fixed column at the right of this page (desktop) highlights as you scroll. Try clicking a section name — the page smooth-scrolls to that anchor, and the mark follows.