[Avodah] Format of Tehillim

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:59:02 +0100, Alan Rubin <alan at rubin.org.uk> wrote:
> Why do the vast majority of siddurim print most tehillim as if they
> were prose? Doesn't this obscure the poetry of the tehillim?

When written by a sofeir al kelaf, it's written like Ha'Azinu, in two
columns. Of course this means that if you have a 3 or 1 phrase pasuq 
the pesuqim stop mid-line until the next pasuq with an odd number of
phrases.

I thought that was strange, and obscures the structure. And isn't merely
the whim of publishers.

In AL, I simply lacked the time to do the formatting. What if the two
phrases on that line, in the font I chose, don't fit?

To really answer your question, I think in many cases it reflects the
fact that most people aren't shopping for a siddur based on their
knowledge of what the tefillos mean. In other cases, e.g. interlinear
siddurim (whether to English or Modern Hebrew), it's more like what I
had when I tried doing my mini-siddur -- the technical work is heavy,
especially given the interwoven translation.

Not a Torah answer at all, more Areivim than Avodah, but there it is.

Tir'u baTov! 
-Micha