Editorial style

Formatting is treated as editorial craft rather than decoration. Choices follow common habits of scholarly and liturgical English Bibles, informed by guides such as the SBL Handbook of Style, the Chicago Manual of Style, and classical typographic practice (including Bringhurst’s principles of measure, leading, and page color), adapted to a responsive web column.

• English scripture body — SBL BibLit, a serif face designed for biblical and academic work. Used for chapter and verse text so the reading line stays distinct from UI chrome.
• Interface & headings — Libre Caslon Text (with system serif fallbacks), for titles, navigation, and surrounding copy.
• Greek — Gentium Plus / Noto Serif / Cardo stack, with OpenType mark positioning where available.
• Hebrew — Noto Serif Hebrew (with system fallbacks), set right-to-left.

Font size in the reader is user-selectable in four steps (default: smallest). Size changes apply to chapter and verse bodies only; they do not alter the house faces above.

On desktop, chapter prose is held to a moderate measure (about forty to forty-two rem wide) so lines stay readable while still showing enough text on screen. Inner padding on the passage card increases on larger breakpoints so the text does not crowd the frame. Leading is kept near 1.75–1.9 for continuous reading. Mobile uses a slightly tighter scale and padding where needed.

Body text may use automatic hyphenation and “pretty” wrapping where the browser supports it; verse-focus view prefers balanced, unhyphenated lines for a short centered reading.

Preferred English editions are set in publisher paragraph form where we can obtain official structure—not one verse per block. Breaks are applied as presentation only; wording is not rewritten.

• KJV — eBible / helloao eng-kjv line breaks; offline fallback: Cambridge Paragraph Bible pilcrows. Body remains red-letter kjv-rle.
• NIV, NLT, NKJV, NASB, CSB (and other API.Bible editions) — publisher HTML <p> blocks from the licensed chapter payload.
• ESV — Crossway HTML <p> structure from the official ESV API.
• NET, WEB, OJPS, BSB (open / static) — helloao / eBible line breaks when the edition publishes them; otherwise pilcrows in the bundled text if present.

The first paragraph after a chapter heading is flush left; following paragraphs take a modest first-line indent. Verse numbers sit in the flow as superscript apparatus, not as list bullets.

In English texts that print the tetragrammaton substitute as full capitals (LORD, GOD, JAH), the reader displays them in small capitals with light tracking—standard biblical house style—so the name is marked without shouting. Possessives (LORD'S, GOD'S) follow the same treatment.

For speech synthesis only, those tokens are sent as title case (e.g. “Lord”) so voices pronounce a word rather than spelling letters. Display capitalization is unchanged.

• Supplied words (KJV italics in the source) render in true italic as supplied text—the usual English Bible convention for words added for sense.
• Words of Christ use a restrained rubrical red (adjusted for light and dark themes), not a saturated UI accent.

Psalm titles and similar headings that arrive in angle-bracket form (for example, <A Psalm of David.>) are shown as a quiet italic line above the verse body, without the brackets. They are editorial apparatus—not part of the spoken chapter stream for audio follow-along.

Verse numbers are set as compact superscript lining figures in a secondary color so the continuous text remains primary. They are interactive (focus / navigation) but visually secondary to the words.

When audio is playing, an optional follow-along cursor (the “visual guide” or blackball) tracks spoken words above the line. It uses the same word order as the chapter audio stream: superscriptions are skipped; divine names and red/italic styling on the line remain. The control lives in reader settings beside font size.

• We do not invent poetic lineation unless the data supplies it.
• We do not alter canonical wording for layout; only presentation and speech pronunciation helpers.
• We do not use full capitals for divine names on screen when small capitals can express the same distinction more calmly.

• SBL Handbook of Style — biblical names, scholarly conventions
• Chicago Manual of Style — hierarchy, clarity, consistency
• Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style — measure, leading, page color
• Traditional KJV paragraph (pilcrow) practice — continuous reading