A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages bound together and protected by a cover. It can also be a handwritten or printed work of fiction or nonfiction, usually on sheets of paper fastened or bound together within covers. The technical term for this physical arrangement is codex. In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page.
The codex was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term codex is often used for ancient manuscript books, with handwritten contents. A codex, much like the modern book, is bound by stacking the pages and securing one set of edges by a variety of methods over the centuries, yet in a form analogous to modern bookbinding. Modern books are divided into paperback and those bound with stiff boards, called hardbacks. Elaborate historical bindings are called treasure bindings. At least in the Western world, the main alternative to the paged codex format for a long document was the continuous scroll, which was the dominant form of document in the ancient world. Some codices are continuously folded like a concertina, in particular the Maya codices and Aztec codices, which are actually long sheets of paper or animal skin folded into pages.
The King James Version (KJV), King James Bible (KJB), Authorized Version (AV), or originally 1611 King Iames Version is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of King James VI and I. The 80 books of the King James Version include 39 books of the Old Testament, 14 books of Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament. Noted for its "majesty of style", the King James Version has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in the shaping of the English-speaking world.
A manuscript was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has come to be understood to further include any written, typed, or word-processed copy of an author's work, as distinguished from the rendition as a printed version of the same.
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books by decree in 1586, it is the second oldest university press after Cambridge University Press.
Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical type in mechanical systems or glyphs in digital systems representing characters. Stored types are retrieved and ordered according to a language's orthography for visual display. Typesetting requires one or more fonts. One significant effect of typesetting was that authorship of works could be spotted more easily, making it difficult for copiers who have not gained permission.
Bibliography, as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology. English author and bibliographer John Carter describes bibliography as a word having two senses: one, a list of books for further study or of works consulted by an author ; the other one, applicable for collectors, is "the study of books as physical objects" and "the systematic description of books as objects".
The long s⟨ſ⟩, also known as the medial s or initial s, is an archaic form of the lowercase letter ⟨s⟩. It replaced the single s, or one or both of the letters s in a "double s" sequence. The modern ⟨s⟩ letterform is known as the "short", "terminal", or "round" s. In typography, it is known as a type of swash letter, commonly referred to as a "swash s". The long s is the basis of the first half of the grapheme of the German alphabet ligature letter ⟨ß⟩,.
In publishing, a colophon is a brief statement containing information about the publication of a book such as an "imprint".
The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia is one of the largest encyclopedic dictionaries of the English language. In its day it was compared favorably with the Oxford English Dictionary, and frequently consulted for more factual information than would normally be the case for a dictionary.
A chapbook is a small publication of up to about 40 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch.
Sir Henry Savile was an English scholar and mathematician, Warden of Merton College, Oxford, and Provost of Eton. He endowed the Savilian chairs of Astronomy and of Geometry at Oxford University, and was one of the scholars who translated the New Testament from Greek into English. He was a Member of the Parliament of England for Bossiney in Cornwall in 1589, and Dunwich in Suffolk in 1593.
The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from folio, to quarto (smaller) and octavo. Historically, these terms referred to the format of the book, a technical term used by printers and bibliographers to indicate the size of a leaf in terms of the size of the original sheet. For example, a quarto historically was a book printed on sheets of paper folded in half twice, with the first fold at right angles to the second, to produce 4 leaves, each leaf one fourth the size of the original sheet printed – note that a leaf refers to the single piece of paper, whereas a page is one side of a leaf. Because the actual format of many modern books cannot be determined from examination of the books, bibliographers may not use these terms in scholarly descriptions.
Theodore Low De Vinne was an American printer and scholarly author on typography. Considered "the leading commercial printer of his day," De Vinne did much for the improvement of American printing and typography.
Sentence spacing concerns how spaces are inserted between sentences in typeset text and is a matter of typographical convention. Since the introduction of movable-type printing in Europe, various sentence spacing conventions have been used in languages with a Latin alphabet. These include a normal word space, a single enlarged space, and two full spaces.
The term "folio" has three interconnected but distinct meanings in the world of books and printing: first, it is a term for a common method of arranging sheets of paper into book form, folding the sheet only once, and a term for a book made in this way; second, it is a general term for a sheet, leaf or page in (especially) manuscripts and old books; and third, it is an approximate term for the size of a book, and for a book of this size.
Bookbinding is the process of building a book, usually in codex format, from an ordered stack of paper sheets with one's hands and tools, or in modern publishing, by automated processes. Firstly, one binds the sheets of papers along an edge with a thick needle and strong thread. One can also use loose-leaf rings, binding posts, twin-loop spine coils, plastic spiral coils, and plastic spine combs, but they last for a shorter time. Next, one encloses the bound stack of paper in a cover. Finally, one places an attractive cover onto the boards, and features the publisher's information and artistic decorations.
Ronald Brunlees McKerrow, FBA was one of the leading bibliographers and Shakespeare scholars of the 20th century.
The history of sentence spacing is the evolution of sentence spacing conventions from the introduction of movable type in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg to the present day.
Alfred Forbes Johnson, MC was an English academic librarian, bibliographer, curator, and expert in typography. He was Deputy Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum. He is author of many bibliographical reference works, and the standard Encyclopaedia of Typefaces.
