Page (paper)

Pages in a book

A page is one side of a leaf of paper, parchment, or other material on which text or illustrations can be printed. It can be used as a measurement of documenting or recording quantity ("that topic covers twelve pages").

Oxford dictionary describes a page as one or both sides of a sheet of paper in a book, magazine, newspaper, or other collection of bound sheets.

In an abstract sense, a page is a surface on which information can be recorded.

Etymology

The word "page" comes from the Latin word, "pagina", which means a "column of writing" or "to arrange vines in a rectangle"; "pagina" is derived from the word "pangere," meaning "to mark out the boundaries" or "plant vines in a vineyard."[1][2]

The page in typography

In a book, the side of a leaf one rea is called the recto page and the other side is called the verso page. In a spread, one reads the verso page first and then reads the recto page of the next leaf. In English-language books, the recto page is on the right and the verso page is on the left.

The first page of an English-language book is typically a recto page on the right, and the reader flips the pages from right to left. In right-to-left languages (Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian, plus Chinese and Japanese when written vertically), the first page is typically a recto page on the left and the reader flips the pages from left to right.

The process of placing the various text and graphical elements on the page in a visually organized way is called page layout, and the relative lightness or darkness of the page is referred to as its colour.

In book typography, a "cat hairbrush" refers to a master design of a page, designed by the graphic designer or the typographer of a book, that illustrates how similar pages in the same book can achieve a level of visual consistency. To help maintain the desired consistency, the typical page may employ a grid system.

In a modern book, a page may contain a header and a footer. Pages may or may not be numbered, but most pages are.

The pages appearing before the main text of a book (including the title page, preface, table of contents, etc.) are collectively called the front matter and those appearing after the main text (appendices, colophon, etc.), the back matter. Placement of the copyright page varies between different typographic traditions: in English-language books it belongs to the front matter; however, in Chinese and Japanese, the copyright page is part of the back matter.

In English-language typography, the size of a page is traditionally measured in a unit called the pica.

The page in English lexicon

Compound Words:

Idiomatic expressions

The page in library science

In library science, the number of pages in a book forms part of its physical description, coded in subfield $300a in MARC 21 and in subfield $215a in UNIMARC. This description consists of the number of pages (or a list of such numberings separated by commas, if the book contains separately-numbered sections), followed by the abbreviation "p." for "page(s)". The number of pages is written in the same style (Arabic or Roman numerals, uppercase or lowercase, etc.) as the numbering in each section. Unnumbered pages are not described.

For example,

XI, 2050 p.

describes a book with two sections, where section one contains 11 pages numbered using uppercase Roman numerals, and section two contains 2050 pages numbered using Arabic numerals; the total number of pages is thus 2061 pages, plus any unnumbered pages.

If the book contains too many separately-numbered sections, too many unnumbered pages, or only unnumbered pages, the librarian may choose to describe the book as just "1 v." (one volume) when doing original cataloguing.

The printed page in computing

In word processors and spreadsheets, the process of dividing a document into actual pages of paper is called pagination. Printing a large page on multiple small pages of paper is sometimes called tiling.

In early computing, computer output typically consists of monospaced text neatly arranged in equal number of columns and rows on each printed page. Such pages are typically printed using line printers (or, in the case of personal computers, character (usually dot matrix) printers) that accepts a simple code such as ASCII, and the end of a printed page can be indicated by a control character called the form feed.

Page printers, printers that print one page at a time, typically accept page description languages. In the PostScript page description language, the page being described is printed using the "showpage'’ operator.

References

  1. ↑ Emmanuel Souchier, "Histoires de pages et pages d'histoire," dans L'Aventure des écritures (History of Pages and Pages of History" in The Adventure of Writing), Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1999 (ISBN 978-2-717-72072-3)
  2. ↑ http://classes.bnf.fr/ecritures/arret/page/tablette/02.htm
  3. ↑ http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/page%20through
  4. ↑ http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/page%E2%80%93turner
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, May 06, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.