

In the discussion of manuscripts, a folio means a leaf with two pages, the recto being the first the reader encounters, and the verso the second. The British Library Incunabula Short Title Catalogue currently lists about 28,100 different editions of surviving books, pamphlets and broadsides (some fragmentary only) printed before 1501, of which about 8,600 are folios, representing just over 30 percent of all works in the catalogue. įolios were a common format of books printed in the incunabula period (books printed before 1501), although the earliest printed book, surviving only as a fragment of a leaf, is a quarto. Shakespeare's First Folio edition is printed as a folio and has a page height of 12.5 inches (320 mm), making it a rather small folio size.

Several such folded conjugate pairs of leaves were inserted inside one another to produce the sections or gatherings, which were then sewn together to form the final book.

The page size is 12 x 17.5 inches (307 x 445 mm), a "double folio" size. The Gutenberg Bible was printed in about 1455 as a folio, in which four pages of text were printed on each sheet of paper, which were then folded once.
#WHATS A FOLIO CHEESE WRAP FULL#
For example, bibliographers call a book printed as a folio (two leaves per full sheet), but bound in gatherings of 8 leaves each, a "folio in 8s."

There are variations in how folios are produced. Other common book formats are quarto and octavo, which are both also printing formats, involving two and three folds in the sheet respectively.Ĭopy of the Gutenberg Bible, printed in folio format Third, folio is also used as an approximate term for a size of book, typically about 15 inches (38 cm) tall, and as such does not necessarily indicate the actual printing format of the books, which may even be unknown as is the case for many modern books. This will be on the right hand side of the opening of any book composed in a script that is read from left-to-right, such as Latin (as used in English), Cyrillic, or Greek, and will be opposite for books composed in a script that is read from right-to-left, such as Hebrew and Arabic. This usually appears abbreviated: "f26r." means the first side of the 26th leaf in a book. Second, folio is used in terms of page numbering for some books and most manuscripts that are bound but without page numbers as an equivalent of "page" (both sides), "sheet" or "leaf", using " recto" and " verso" to designate the first and second sides, and (unlike the usage in printing) disregarding whether the leaf concerned is actually physically still joined with another leaf. Ordinarily, additional printed folio sheets would be inserted inside one another to form a group or "gathering" of leaves prior to binding the book. Each leaf of a folio book thus is one half the size of the original sheet. The term " folio" (from Latin folium 'leaf' ), 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.įirst, a folio (abbreviated fo or 2 o) is a book or pamphlet made up of one or more full sheets of paper, on each of which four pages of text are printed, two on each side each sheet is then folded once to produce two leaves. Single folio from a large Qur'an, North Africa, 8th c.
