Parts of a Book

Have you ever wondered why the information at the top of a page is called a "Header"? Or why the stuff at the bottom is a "Footer?"

It all goes back to the names for the parts of a book. Some book parts carry the names of the body. The top of a book is it's head, the bottom is it's foot. The front of the cover is it's face and the back is the spine. That is why the words printed on the spine are called a "spine title".

When the book is open, the human body analogy goes away. Covers are made from "boards" covered in fabric. Boards may once have really been board, but today they are made of a very stiff pressed paper. The fabric covers are cloth, leather, or paper. The more valuable the cover fabric the more expensive the book becomes.

• When the outside cover is in place, its edges are glued down and a large, heavier weight piece of paper that is twice the width of the book is glued over the fabric edges and the inside of the board. The other half of that sheet extends over the text block to become the fly leaf. The fly leaf may be left plain, or be decorated. It's not unusual to see maps or simple illustrations running across the flyleaf. Intricate ones will continue the action from the front cover and fly leaf to the back cover and fly leaf. In older books, gold marbling was used on the fly leaves. Yep. That made the book more expensive, too. The edges of the pages were treated with gold and "gilded," too.


• The text block is just what it sounds like. Its the block of pages that makes up everything inside the covers of the book. It is attached to the spine in one of several ways, but the flexible part that lets the cover open is always called the hinge (just like a door hinge). In older books cloth straps helped hold the covers together and were stitched and glued to the spine. Later the text blocks were still stitched together, but they were attached to the covers with cloth hinges. Today, the spine is one piece with the cover fabric and the text block may be attached to it directly. The only hinging is created by the flyleaf and the other pages.


• In paperback books the edge of the text block is cut in ridges to hold glue. The text block is passed through a special hot glue, then attached to a paper spine that is one piece with the covers. When the glue dries, the glue in the cuts works like stitching to keep the pages from falling out. Some papers adhere to the glue better than others. The heavy clay-based paper used for books with lots of photography doesn't hold glue well. It is difficult to keep these covers from popping loose if a book is read a lot. You have probably had a paper cover come loose on a book like that and seen the scored edge and the remains of the glue.


• Why were the text blocks stitched? It was to hold the pages together. The printing process causes pages to be printed with two, four, eight, or more pages to a sheet of paper. Each time more pages are printed on a sheet of paper, there is an intricate folding process that brings all the pages together in the proper order. After the sheet is folded, all of the pages that came from one sheet of paper is called a signature. Originally signatures were stitched together to make the text block solid. Just before the block is attached to the covers, the three open sides are run through a machine that trims the edges so the pages will open. There was a time that the outside edge of more expensive books were left uncut. It was supposed to be a big honor to be the original owner who cut the pages of a book. (Personally, I'm glad to give up that honor. I have always managed to tear one of the pages when I tried that trick.)


• Today some books are stitched and others are glued. Libraries can buy books with "library bindings" that have sturdier covers and stitched text blocks that will hold up to the heavy circulation seen with library books. Library bindings are particularly popular in children's books because they see a lot of heavy use.


• If a library buys an ordinary (or trade edition) book that doesn't stand up to library use, the librarian can choose to send the book to a bindery to have it repaired. The librarian can determine how the book will be fixed. Some will be sewn and given covers in a strudy fabric called buckram. Other books may have their original dust jackets turned into paper covers on a text block with a glued spine, much like some trade editions. This has the advantage of being colorful and keeping the look of the original book. It seems every bindery has its own name for the dust jacket to cover process. The library where I worked longest called them "Dusties."

But I digress... there's are more book parts.

• After the book is put together, there is a structure to the way the pages are put together.
  We have already mentioned the fly leaf. In the early days of printing, books didn't have hard covers and they didn't have title pages. They just had the information on the first layer of the book. It didn't take long for those pages to get worn off and what was left? No way to tell which book you had. Publishers solved that problem by moving the title information deeper into the book, creating a "title page" and putting a blank page, then a page with a short version of the title (the "running title") on the page above the blank page. This was called the "half-title" page. If the half-title page got destroyed, there was the blank page left to protect the full title page. When publishers started putting hard covers on their books, they left the half title, blank page, then full-title page pattern in place. Today some publishers omit the half title pages; others still use it.


• Writing wasn't a very lucrative business in its early years. Authors found it good to have patrons to help support them. Sometimes the patrons gave them money or gave them a place to live or just introduced them to the right people in society. It wasn't long before the authors were slipping a note in after the half-title page dedicating their works to this patron or that one. Being practical people, publishers called this "the dedication page." Today writers don't have patrons, but they still put dedications in their books. They dedicate their books to people that have helped them, or to people they care about. I always like the dedication that went "To Mom and Dad. Without you I wouldn't be." Some authors make their dedications inside jokes. There was one author who dedicated his book to his two pet cats (they had people-sounding names) who had given him so much assistance with the work.


• After the dedication, you will usually find the title page. If there is a photograph beside the title page, it gets its own name: frontspiece, but the side with the words is called the title page. This is the official title of the book, a listing of its authors (usually), the illustrators, maybe the editors, the name of the publisher and the place where the material was published. Sometimes the date it was published is on the title page also.


• On the back side of the title page, or the verso, as its called in publishing language, the publisher puts his legal information and other data about the book. This is where you find the copyright information, printing history, list of editions, ISBN number and other identifying information, and maybe the Cataloging in Publication information. (If that jargon is too much, go a few entries down and read the one on Cataloging Terms).


• What comes after the verso varies according to the kind of book you have. If the book is fiction, you will usually leap into chapter one and get going with the story. Everything that comes before the first chapter is called "front matter." Every thing that comes after the last page of the main body of the work -- okay, the story, if its fiction -- is called "end matter." Fiction has minimal front matter and very little end matter. You may find an author's note somewhere and that's about it.


• Non-fiction is not so streamlined. After the verso, non-fiction can really pile on the front matter.


• There may be acknowledgments that go on like an actor at the Academy Awards. "Thanks to so-and-so for typing, and Uncle Arnold for proofreading, and Aunt Edna for bringing me a cherry cobbler..." Since I'm a wife, I always like the ones that read, "And thanks to my wife for putting up with me." In some ways, acknowledgments do today what dedications did in the days of patrons. After the acknowledgments, there may be a preface (sometimes more than one), and/or a foreword. The Free Online Dictionary defines a preface as "A preliminary statement or essay introducing a book that explains its scope, intention, or background and is usually written by the author." Merriam-Webster's online dictionary says a foreword does the same job as a preface, but it's written by someone other than the author.


• There is usually a table of contents, so you can see what the book is about before you get into it. There may be a list of illustrations. After all of that the author may come back and give you an Introduction. It gets a bit hazy how an introduction is different from a preface or a foreword. The introduction is written more in the tone of the main body of the work and seems to spell out the ground rules or working information for using the rest of the book.


• All of the front matter is paged with little Roman numerals. Catalogers have a lot of fun with books like this. They have to list the paging in the catalog record, and they have to count everything, so they will write something like "frontspiece, vi, 332 p. ; ill. : 24 cm."

I don't think anyone but other catalogers ever checks the paging information in a record, but we have a great time being able to look at it and tell a patron, "Oh, that book has a little more than 300 pages, so it's about an inch thick; and it's 24 cm., so that makes it about a handspan tall. Its call number is 636.7, so you will find it on the 3rd range of shelves, on the right side, about half way down. " The patron just stands there with his tongue hanging out, thinking we are psychic. (Or is that psycho?) As he wanders off toward the mysterious shelves just described, we give the parting shot, "And, oh, yes, it says "ill.", so it has illustrations. You should be able to find the picture of a German Shepherd in that one." Oh, the games librarians play... (Don't you love my German Shepherd picture? I just had to slip it in here. Hagar wanted to be a farm dog. He lived most of his life in Dallas, but got to enjoy country living at the end. He died last year and I still miss him.)

• Back to the parts of a book. We've covered front matter. Now to the good stuff. The body of the work! That's pretty straight forward. It has chapters. It may have illustrations. Its numbered with Arabic numerals that we can all read without counting on our fingers. And it finally comes to an end.


• Then you get to the end matter. Some dedicated authors put in an afterword, which summarizes what they just told you or tells you jokes or finishes things off in some fashion. Fiction writers might put in an epilogue, which is the chapter after the last chapter that ties up all the loose ends and gives you a glimpse of the characters some time later.


• Non-fiction may have appendixes that give supplemental information that relates to the subject of the book. For example, the policy manuals librarians write frequently have appendices that list the Library Bill of Rights and other formal statements that support the principles expressed in the policies. I have seen some books that have more pages of appendices than there are pages in the body of the work. (Somehow that seems like overkill.)


• Books with lots of photographs or other material that needs to have recognitions and permissions cited may have a List of Credits either before or after the appendixes.


• Last will usually come the indexes. Some books don't find one index enough. Song books may have an index of authors, an index of titles and an index of first lines. Cookbooks may have a main ingredient list as well as a recipe name list. The indexes are the last thing written before a book is published. They give you an alphabetical listing of the subjects covered in the book with page numbers beside the subjects so you can jump directly to the information you want.

My hat is off to indexers. They read the entire book, take notes, and create the indexes for it in two weeks or less just before the book goes to press. I've been using indexes for years and I have very seldom found errors in them. There is an entire world of unsung heroes out there indexing books perfectly.Wow!