... one of the brilliant inventions of the paper bureaucracy was the idea of the margin. The margin is a place on a paper form, which is designed for writing things down that are outside, both physically and conceptually, the form that “the system” expects. The thing about the margin is that it is connected to the form in such a way that the form carries the stuff that goes beyond the form along with the form.
Austin Henderson, quoted in chapter 4 of Software Design & Usability (Klaus Kaasgaard): 'Beyond Formalisms: The Art and Science of Designing Pliant Systems'.
Link via John Udell.
