What do the terms for measuring book sizes mean?
Letpress Mailing List Netiquette Tens of thousands of mailing lists have been operated over more than two decades of Internet use, and during that time several basic principles (collectively known as netiquette) have been developed by consensus that govern responsible use of the lists for the benefit of all their members. While most of them are based on common sense and common courtesy, a quick review is often helpful, especially for those who might be new to the use of Internet mailing lists. There are several sites online with excellent discussions of netiquette, including the complete online text of the classic book Netiquette by Virginia Shea, and TidBits Mailing List Manners 101 and 102. With regard to Letpress in particular, most active members of the list would probably agree with the following guidelines: When you first join Letpress, monitor the messages for a few days to get a feel for what common questions are asked, and what topics are deemed off-limits. This is often refer
Book sizes are based on the practice of folding a large sheet of paper to create several pages. A traditional sized sheet (e.g., 25 x 38) which is folded twice to create four pages yealds a quarto (4to) sized book (measuring 12.5 x 19), a sheet folded three times to create eight pages yields an octavo (8vo) sized book (measuring 9.5 x 12.5), and so on. If you’re mathematical, you’ll notice that the number of pages is two raised to the number of folds (2**3 = 8). This means that the format of a book — quarto, folio, etc. — defines how the book was made from the original sheets and does not actually indicate its size. A folio book (made with one fold in the original sheet) made from a 3″ x 4″ sheet is smaller than an octavo book made from a sheet measuring 9″ x 14″. Unfortunately, almost nobody uses book format names correctly anymore. If you want to be a purist, don’t use a format name to indicate size – always use it’s measure in mm, cm, or inches. Use format only when you know how the
