![Khalili Collection Islamic Art kfq 0096](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Khalili_Collection_Islamic_Art_kfq_0096.jpg)
The term "folio" (), has three interconnected but distinct meanings in the world of
book
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arr ...
s and
printing
Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ea ...
: first, it is a term for a common method of arranging
sheets of paper
Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, Textile, rags, poaceae, grasses or other vegetable sources in water, draining the water through fine mesh leaving the fibre e ...
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)
manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printing, printed or repr ...
s and old books; and third, it is an approximate term for the
size of a book, and for a book of this size.
First, a folio (abbreviated fo or 2
o) is a book or
pamphlet
A pamphlet is an unbound book (that is, without a hard cover or binding). Pamphlets may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths, called a ''leaflet'' or it may consist of a ...
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
A leaf (plural, : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant plant stem, stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", wh ...
. Each leaf of a folio book thus is one half the size of the original sheet. Ordinarily, additional printed folio sheets would be inserted inside one another to form a group or "gathering" of leaves prior to binding the book.
Second, folio is used in terms of
page numbering
Page numbering is the process of applying a sequence of numbers (or letters, or Roman numerals) to the pages of a book or other document. The number itself, which may appear in various places on the page, can be referred to as a page number or as ...
for some books and most
manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printing, printed or repr ...
s 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. This usually appears abbreviated: "f26r." means the first side of the 26th leaf in a book. 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
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
(as used in English),
Cyrillic
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 = Phoenician
, fam4 = G ...
, or
Greek, and will be opposite for books composed in a script that is read from right-to-left, such as
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
and
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
.
Third, folio is also used as an approximate term for a size of book, typically about 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. Other common book formats are ''
quarto
Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...
'' and ''
octavo'', which are both also printing formats, involving two and three folds in the sheet respectively.
![Folio-Quarto-Octavo Compared](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Folio-Quarto-Octavo_Compared.svg)
Famous folios (in both senses) include the
Gutenberg Bible, printed in about 1455, and the
First Folio collected edition of
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
's plays, printed in 1623; however, their actual size is rather different.
Format
A folio (from Latin foliō, abl. of folium, leaf) is a book or pamphlet made up of one or more full sheets of paper, on each sheet of which four pages of text are printed, two on each side; each sheet is then folded one time to produce two leaves. Each leaf of a folio book thus is one half the size of the original sheet. This contrasts with a
quarto
Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...
, folding each sheet twice, and
octavo, folding each sheet three times. Unlike the folio, these last, and further types involving more folds, require the pages of the book to be cut open after binding, which might be done mechanically by the printer, but in historic books was often left for the reader to do with a
paper-knife.
There are variations in how folios are produced. 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."
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. The page size is 12 x 17.5 inches (307 x 445 mm), a "double 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. 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.
Folios were a common format of books printed in the
incunabula
In the history of printing, an incunable or incunabulum (plural incunables or incunabula, respectively), is a book, pamphlet, or broadside that was printed in the earliest stages of printing in Europe, up to the year 1500. Incunabula were pro ...
period (books printed before 1501), although the earliest printed book, surviving only as a fragment of a leaf, is a
quarto
Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...
. The
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...
Incunabula Short Title Catalogue
The Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC) is an electronic bibliographic database maintained by the British Library which seeks to catalogue all known incunabula. The database lists books by individual editions, recording standard bibliographic ...
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.
Page numbering
![Recto and verso RTL](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Recto_and_verso_RTL.svg)
In the discussion of manuscripts, a folio means a leaf with two pages, the
recto
''Recto'' is the "right" or "front" side and ''verso'' is the "left" or "back" side when text is written or printed on a leaf of paper () in a bound item such as a codex, book, broadsheet, or pamphlet.
Etymology
The terms are shortened from ...
being the first the reader encounters, and the
verso the second. In Western books, which are read by turning the pages over from right to left, when the book is begun with the open page edges at the reader's right, the first page to be seen is "folio 1 recto", typically abbreviated to "f1 r.". When this page is turned over "f1 v." is on the left and "f2 r." on the right of the "opening", or two pages that are visible. For books in Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and other languages, where the book is begun from the back in Western terms, with the open page edges at the reader's left, the numbering also follows the sequence in which the reader encounters.
In the discussion of two-columned manuscripts, a/b/c/d can denote the left and right-hand columns of recto and verso pages (e.g. "f. 150a" and "f. 150b" are the left and right hand columns on the recto page, and "f. 150c" and "f. 150d" the left and right hand columns on the verso page). In the discussion of three-columned manuscripts, notation may make use of folio number + recto/verso + column a/b/c (e.g. "f. 3 v. col. c" references the third column on the verso side of the third folio).
Size
The actual size of a folio book depends on the
size of the full sheet of paper on which it was printed, and in older periods these were not standardized, so the term's meaning is only approximate. Historically, printers used a range of names such as (with approximate maximum page height): Double Elephant Folio (50 inches, 127 cm), Atlas Folio (25 inches, ca 63 cm), Elephant Folio (23 inches, ca 58 cm), Royal Folio (20 inches, ca 51 cm), Medium Folio (18 inches, ca 46 cm), and (the most common) Crown Folio (15 inches, ca 38 cm).
From the mid-nineteenth century, technology permitted the manufacture of large sheets or rolls of paper on which books were printed, many text pages at a time. As a result, it may be impossible to determine the actual format (i.e., number of leaves formed from each sheet fed into a press). The term "folio" as applied to such books may refer simply to the size, i.e., books that are approximately 15 inches (38 cm) tall.
Shakespeare folios
From the earliest days of printing, folios were often used for expensive, prestigious volumes. In the seventeenth century, plays of the
English Renaissance theatre were printed as collected editions in folio. Thirty-six of Shakespeare's plays, for example, were included in the
First Folio collected edition of 1623, which was followed by additional folio editions, referred to as the
Second Folio
The Second Folio is the 1632 edition of the collected plays of William Shakespeare. It follows the First Folio of 1623. Much language was updated in the Second Folio and there are almost 1,700 changes.
The major partners in the First Folio had ...
, etc. Other playwrights in this period also published their plays in folio editions, such as
Ben Jonson
Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...
's collected works of 1616.
See further:
*
English Renaissance theatre
*
Early texts of Shakespeare's works
The earliest texts of William Shakespeare's works were published during the 16th and 17th centuries in quarto or folio format. Folios are large, tall volumes; quartos are smaller, roughly half the size. The publications of the latter are usually a ...
*
False Folio
False Folio is the term that Shakespeare scholars and bibliographers have applied to William Jaggard's printing of ten Shakespearean and pseudo-Shakespearean plays together in 1619, the first attempt to collect Shakespeare's work in a single v ...
See also
*
Bookbinding
Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book of codex format from an ordered stack of ''signatures'', sheets of paper folded together into sections that are bound, along one edge, with a thick needle and strong thread. Cheaper, b ...
(includes detailed discussion of various book formats)
*
Book size
*
Octavo
*
Quarto
Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...
References
{{Authority control
Bookbinding
Book formats
Book publishing
Printing terminology