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.
Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdisciplinary branch of design and of the fine arts. Its practice involves creativity, innovation and lateral thinking using manual or digital tools, where it is usual to use text and graphics to communicate visually.
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.
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing (leading), and letter-spacing (tracking), as well as adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning). The term typography is also applied to the style, arrangement, and appearance of the letters, numbers, and symbols created by the process. Type design is a closely related craft, sometimes considered part of typography; most typographers do not design typefaces, and some type designers do not consider themselves typographers. Typography also may be used as an ornamental and decorative device, unrelated to the communication of information.
A monospaced font, also called a fixed-pitch, fixed-width, or non-proportional font, is a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts with variable-width fonts, where the letters and spacings have different widths.
Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online content. Desktop publishing software can generate layouts and produce typographic-quality text and images comparable to traditional typography and printing. Desktop publishing is also the main reference for digital typography. This technology allows individuals, businesses, and other organizations to self-publish a wide variety of content, from menus to magazines to books, without the expense of commercial printing.
In typography, leading is the space between adjacent lines of type; the exact definition varies.
A scroll, also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing.
In typography, text or font in all caps contains capital letters without any lowercase letters. For example: THIS TEXT IS IN ALL CAPS. All-caps text can be seen in legal documents, advertisements, newspaper headlines, and the titles on book covers. Short strings of words in capital letters appear bolder and "louder" than mixed case, and this is sometimes referred to as "screaming" or "shouting". All caps can also be used to indicate that a given word is an acronym.
The history of books became an acknowledged academic discipline in the 1980s. Contributors to the discipline include specialists from the fields of textual scholarship, codicology, bibliography, philology, palaeography, art history, social history and cultural history. Its key purpose is to demonstrate that the book as an object, not just the text contained within it, is a conduit of interaction between readers and words. Analysis of each component part of the book reveals its purpose, where and how it was kept, who read it, ideological and religious beliefs of the period and whether readers interacted with the text within. Even a lack of evidence of this nature leaves valuable clues about the nature of that particular book.
Cambria is a transitional serif typeface commissioned by Microsoft and distributed with Windows and Office. It was designed by Dutch typeface designer Jelle Bosma in 2004, with input from Steve Matteson and Robin Nicholas. It is intended as a serif font that is suitable for body text, that is very readable printed small or displayed on a low-resolution screen and has even spacing and proportions.
In graphic design, page layout is the arrangement of visual elements on a page. It generally involves organizational principles of composition to achieve specific communication objectives.
In typesetting and page layout, alignment or range is the setting of text flow or image placement relative to a page, column (measure), table cell, or tab.
Type color, or colour, is an element of typography that describes how dense or heavy the text appears on the page. Finding the correct balance of type color and white space can make text more easily readable. The term type color should not be confused with the usual meaning of color, ; instead it has more to do with the blackness or boldness of the text on the page. A bold font weight creates more contrast on the page, therefore creates more emphasis. Using a bold font is therefore one way that type color can be adjusted.
In a written or published work, an initial capital is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter, or a paragraph that is larger than the rest of the text. The word is derived from the Latin initialis, which means standing at the beginning. An initial is often several lines in height and in older books or manuscripts are known as "inhabited" initials. Certain important initials, such as the Beatus initial or "B" of Beatus vir... at the opening of Psalm 1 at the start of a vulgate Latin. These specific initials in an illuminated manuscript were also called initiums.
A biblical manuscript is any handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible. Biblical manuscripts vary in size from tiny scrolls containing individual verses of the Jewish scriptures to huge polyglot codices containing both the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the New Testament, as well as extracanonical works.
In typography, a column is one or more vertical blocks of content positioned on a page, separated by gutters or rules. Columns are most commonly used to break up large bodies of text that cannot fit in a single block of text on a page. Additionally, columns are used to improve page composition and readability. Newspapers very frequently use complex multi-column layouts to break up different stories and longer bodies of texts within a story. Column can also more generally refer to the vertical delineations created by a typographic grid system which type and image may be positioned. In page layout, the whitespace on the outside of the page are known as margins; the gap between two facing pages is also considered a gutter, since there are columns on both sides.
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.
Matthew Coffin Butterick is an American typographer, lawyer, writer, and computer programmer. He received the 2012 Golden Pen Award from the Legal Writing Institute for his book Typography for Lawyers, which started as a website in 2008 based on his experience as a practicing attorney. He has worked for The Font Bureau and founded his own website design company, Atomic Vision. Expanding Typography for Lawyers, Butterick published Practical Typography as a "web-based book" in July 2013.
