Numbered verses and structured texts
Most books are read straight through and referred to by page. A smaller class of book is not: scripture, classical works, legal codes, philosophical texts, anything a reader quotes as 3:16 or II.vii.4 or §12. For those, the structure is part of the content.
That single difference changes how the pages are set, and it is the thing most self-published editions of these texts get wrong.
The numbers are not decoration
A reader who wants a passage does not know what page it is on in your edition, and should not have to. They know the reference. Every edition ever printed carries the same numbering, which is exactly what makes the reference work across editions, centuries and languages.
So the numbers cannot be dropped, renumbered, or thinned out to make a page look tidier. If a designer offers to remove them from a crowded spread, that is not a design improvement — it is a text that can no longer be cited. Everything else about the page is negotiable. This is not.
The two ways to set it
There are two conventions, they produce very different books, and the choice is yours to make deliberately rather than to inherit from whatever your manuscript happened to look like.
Verse per paragraph. Each numbered unit starts a new line, with its number at the left. It is the easiest to scan, it makes the structure visible without reading, and it is what most people picture when they picture a reference edition. It is also long: a new line for every unit wastes the tail of every short one, and the page count runs well past what the same words would take as prose. That is more paper, a wider spine and a higher print cost.
Running prose with embedded numbers. The text runs as ordinary paragraphs, broken where the sense breaks, with small superscript numbers sitting inside the flow. It is much shorter, and it reads as writing rather than as a list, which is the point — continuous argument or narrative reads better when it is set continuously. The cost is scanning: finding a specific number takes a moment longer, because the eye has no left-hand column to run down.
Which one to use depends on what the book is for. A book meant to be read from the beginning wants running prose. A book meant to be consulted — looked into, quoted from, argued with — wants verse per paragraph. Decide which of those your edition is, write the decision down, and apply it to the whole book. A hybrid, prose in some sections and broken lines in others, only tells the reader the setting was not planned.
Sizing the numbers
A superscript number has two failure modes and they pull against each other. Too large and it interrupts — the eye stops at every number and the sentence stops with it. Too small and the reader has to hunt, which is the one thing a reference edition may not make them do.
Set them a step or two smaller than the body, raised but not clear of the line, and in the same family so they do not read as a different voice. Check them at the real printed size, not on screen; a number that is comfortable at 200% on a monitor can disappear at 10 point on cream paper.
Chapter numbers get the opposite treatment. They are the reader's main landmark, so they usually get a display size, and often sit in the margin or in a rule above the text.
In the Interior Formatter. It reads a .docx for structure — chapter starts, italics, bold, scene breaks — and builds the contents from the real chapter structure, so a text divided into books and chapters lists itself correctly. Previews are free, unlimited and watermarked, so set one chapter both ways and compare real pages before you commit the whole book. Start your interior → · about the Interior Formatter
Running heads are the most valuable page in the book
If you do one thing beyond setting the text cleanly, do this: put the range covered by the page into the running head. A reader flicking through a five-hundred-page reference book with nothing but a title at the top of each page is reading the same unhelpful line over and over. A head that says which chapter and verse the page begins and ends with turns the whole book into an index of itself, and costs nothing.
The mechanics of heads and folios are covered in Running heads and page numbers.
Two columns are traditional and usually wrong
Scripture has been set in two columns for centuries, and there is a good reason for it: the texts are enormous, and two columns fit more words on a page. The reason it fails in a self-published edition is arithmetic.
Split a modest trim into two columns and each column is narrow — often only a couple of inches of live text. Justify that narrow column, as these editions traditionally are, and the spacing faults arrive immediately: gaping word spaces, hyphens stacked down the right edge, rivers of white running through the block. A wide column absorbs a long word; a narrow one cannot. Commercial editions survive it with thin paper, small type and very heavy hyphenation, which is a set of trade-offs you probably do not want.
A single column at a comfortable measure reads better in almost every self-published edition, at the cost of pages. If you want to understand what goes wrong in the narrow column before you decide, read Justification, hyphenation, and the gaps between words.
Pick one marker system
The mess to avoid is markers competing. Verse numbers, footnote markers, cross-reference letters and translator's notes all want to sit in the same superscript position, and a page carrying three of them at once is unreadable.
Pick one. Keep the superscript position for verse numbers, since those are the numbering the reader came for, and move everything else somewhere it cannot be confused with them: notes keyed by symbol at the foot, or cross-references collected in a margin column, or a back-matter apparatus. See Footnotes, endnotes and the reader's patience.
Which text you are allowed to set
The practical route for a self-published edition is a public domain text or translation, of which there are several well-known ones for most major works. A modern translation is licensed material owned by somebody, and permission is a real process with real terms — check before you set a page of it, not after. The general shape of that problem is in Quoting other people's work in your book.
Typeset your book
The Interior Formatter is free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript, and it sets real pages you can read before you commit to anything. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
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