Richard Russell’s book contained rules on each page to delineate space at the head, foot, and outer margin. The side margin was a particularly important space for sermon notes, as this is where the auditor could put in notations of the sermon structure (Reason, Doctrine, Use, etc.) and scriptural citations. While some notetakers had extremely narrow margins (and sometimes no margins at all), Russel maintains a spacious, even margin suggestive (along with the size and format of the book itself) of a print sermon. Russsell is remarkably generous with the white space of his page. Typically notetakers fill in every bit of page with writing, and, in fact, as times goes on Russell seems to let his writing overlap into the margin more and more. Quite probably his next sermon notebook would have less copious margin space marked out.

Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.