Given the content of this post, I want to state up front that this is our first guest blogger for the Challenge.

How to break a bad habit and go from shabby to chic.

Hi. My name is (name withheld), and I fold down corners — of everything: books, magazines, phone directories, Bibles. Even publications that aren’t my property get the dog-ear treatment. If you are in your doctor’s office or library and see a magazine or book with a corner turned down, I have probably been there.

I don’t intend to be destructive. It is done either to mark my place when my reading reverie was interrupted, or as a reminder to revisit the nugget I found on that page. However, I’m here to say: be cautious when turning a corner! (Even a literary one.)

This innocent gesture, for instance, can often lead to embarrassment. “What were you looking at on this page?” (says the friend/relative looking through your magazine or book.) “Oh, did you try this recipe?” “Do you have problems with ingrown toenails?” “Why did you mark this chapter on dealing with difficult relationships?” “Oh, so you wanted to reread this steamy chapter?” Sometimes a dog-ear corner reveals more than you want to share.

A “dog-ear”, by definition, is a turned-down corner of a page. In some dictionaries, that first definition is followed by The Ugly Truth: “to make worn or shabby from overuse.” Aside from weakening the precious papyrus and creating a crease that will live in it forever, one dog-ear leads to another. Before you know it, your book is bulging at the top corner. Oh you can mix it up, alternating a turned-down corner at the bottom of a page with one at the top, but you are still going to end up with a permanently damaged book. Whether it’s a library book or one you’ve paid for, no book deserves that.

If any of this sounds familiar (maybe I wasn’t the only one in your doctor’s waiting room turning down those magazine pages), just say no to dog-earring, especially if you are just trying to mark your place. A prettier, more grown-up, papyrus-preserving Indicator is a bookmark. Choose a pretty one, an inspiring one, a funny one, a crafted or stitched one. I prefer the stitched bookmarks. Made by hands for your hands to use, they are classy chic.

Really, it’s not me. After three previous Bookmark Challenges, I actually have embroidered bookmarks of my own!