On Rereading
The first time through a book you read to find out what happens. Every time after that, you read to find out who you were.
Read the essay →Pilcrow Pro
All twenty sections, on one page.
Each block below is a component in src/components/sections/. They take props and nothing else, so a page is just a list of them.
Read by people at
- The Margin Review
- Quarto & Folio
- Ledger Press
- Small Hours
- Verso
Featured essay
Recent writing
All posts →1 min read
Notes, August
Four things from a month of not writing much: a misprint, a cheap notebook, a quiet chapter, and a letter that took nine days.
1 min read
A Due Date from 1987
A secondhand copy of Middlemarch still has its library card in the back. Someone renewed it four times.
3 min read
The Unhurried Newsletter
A note on writing to a schedule you set yourself, and why the best newsletters read like letters, not broadcasts.
Built for reading
A measure you can follow
Body text stays near 65 characters a line.
Footnotes, tables, quotes
Every device an essay leans on is styled with restraint.
Light, dark, and fast
Self-hosted fonts and zero client frameworks.
A page should be quiet enough that you forget it is there.
By the numbers
- Measure
- 65ch
- Line height
- 1.75
- Client framework
- 0 KB
- Font files
- 4
One accent, used sparingly
The rubric red comes from medieval manuscripts, where scribes marked new paragraphs with a pilcrow in red ink. Here it marks links, focus, and nothing else.
About the theme
Setup
Set your name
Edit src/config.ts. Everything site-wide lives there.
Arrange the home page
Reorder sections in src/pages/index.astro.
Write
Add an .mdx file to src/content/blog/ and publish.
Readers
“The first theme where I stopped fiddling and started writing.”
Nell Whitlock, essayist “My footnotes have never looked this respectable.”
Tomás Ferrer, historian
Plans
One payment, a year of updates.
Personal
$49 once
For a single site of your own.
- All sections and pages
- 1 year of updates
- Email support
Team
Popular$129 once
For studios and publications.
- Unlimited sites
- 1 year of updates
- Priority email support
Bundle
$199 once
Every theme, now and later.
- All current themes
- Future themes
- Unlimited sites
Free and Pro
| Free | Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Home sections | 5 | 20 |
| Dark mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Search | — | ✓ |
| Generated OG images | — | ✓ |
Masthead
Nell Whitlock
Editor
Reads everything twice.
Tomás Ferrer
Contributing writer
June Okafor
Copy desk
Keeper of the serial comma.
History
2024
First essay
Written longhand, typed up later.
2025
The newsletter
A letter now and then.
2026
A new page
Rebuilt on Pilcrow.
On the shelf
The Elements of Typographic Style
Robert Bringhurst
The one to read first.
Detail in Typography
Jost Hochuli
The Form of the Book
Jan Tschichold
Short essays, long influence.
Thinking with Type
Ellen Lupton
Archive
Questions
Does it need JavaScript?
Only a few lines for the dark mode toggle.
Can I change the fonts?
Yes. Swap the files and the @theme variables in global.css.
Is it accessible?
It ships with a skip link, visible focus, and AA contrast in both themes.
Newsletter
A short note when a new essay goes up.
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Want a site like this one?
Start with the home page and move sections around until it reads right.
Get in touch