Formatting of prayers
Oct. 14th, 2010 07:08 amI may have the need to format some liturgy at some point in the future, to be read on phones. I am wondering about the best way to lay it out.
The Prayer Book tends to do this sort of thing:
Leader | Lord, open our lips. |
All | And our mouth shall proclaim your praise. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen. |
Leader | Alleluia. The Spirit of the Lord renews the face of the earth: Come let us adore him. Alleluia. |
But some places, such as Mission St Clare, lay this out with indents, without specifying names:
Lord, open our lips.
And our mouth shall proclaim your praise.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.
Alleluia. The Spirit of the Lord renews the face of the earth: Come let us adore him. Alleluia.
And the ASB lays things out with colour: (Edit: this is wrong)
Leader | Lord, open our lips. |
All | And our mouth shall proclaim your praise. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen. |
Leader | Alleluia. The Spirit of the Lord renews the face of the earth: Come let us adore him. Alleluia. |
The Office in particular is often prayed alone these days, so perhaps it's not necessarily so important to see which is the part the leader says and which is the part everyone says. But it would be a nice touch in general, and even useful for the places it's still prayed in groups.
There's also the issue of consistency with responsorial psalms. Psalms and similar texts are traditionally often written like this:
Come let us sing to the Lord; *
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving *
let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation.
and raise a loud shout to him with psalms.
…where the star serves to divide the part the leader says from the part everyone says. For consistency, perhaps these should also be laid out in whichever one of the above forms we use otherwise.