Talk:Book size

Merged from Book formats
See Talk:Book_formats for discussion about merging this with that page, perhaps moving it all to book sizes.


 * Apparently this merger has now been completed, since Book formats now redirects to Book sizes. Leaving the comment above.  --Drake Wilson 20:44, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Article revision
I have completely revised the article. I have accepted the prior merger of Book format into Book size, but greatly expanded the discussion of book format. I think the article would more appropriately be moved to "Book size and format". Ecphora (talk) 00:06, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Diagram
I think this article could benefit from a diagram similar to File:Vector_Video_Standards2.svg. Certainly make it easier to visualize the size relationships. --68.114.68.144 (talk) 02:34, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Added as requested, though the dimensions in the table are highly doubtful (not found on linked page, and e.g. 32mo is over twice the size of 64mo). cm&#610;&#671;ee&#9786;&#964;a&#671;&#954; 13:29, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Ambiguity
The terms folio, quarto, etc are convenient in the modern new book trade, where they are used to denote size. With the proviso that there are many "in between" sizes such as Chancery folio or Double pott,Foolscap, plus oblong and other shaped books.However,in the secondhand trade for rag-made paper books (before about 1801), they have less meaning. For the client buying, say, a Caxton, the exact height of the leaves will be vital to its value ("tall", or "cropped" copy). Such books have usually been rebound several times, and a few millimeters shaved from their outside borders each time. Plus "large paper" copies were often printed in addition to the normal run, frequently on thicker paper. Connoisseurs prefer wide margins, originally intended for annotations (particularly in law books). For these early printed books, normal procedure is to state the cover dimensions, then the leaf ones, height first. To a collector of early books, terms such as folio almost always refer to format, not size. A sheet is folded once, making it a bifolium of two leaves or four pages.So long as these leaves remain attached, it is a cognate bifolium. If it is the top sheet of the gathering, the text of the four pages will be continuous, so it will be a consecutive cognate bifolium. If each gathering is of three sheets, the description would be "folio in sixes". But technically a folio has gatherings of a single sheet (folded to four pages), a quarto two sheets, etc, regardless of the size of the original sheet, with the result that a tiny book could be a folio and a huge one 64to. The only sensible expedient is to abandon, at least for early printing, the terms as used to denote size, and instead take the effort to actually measure them.And the rather greater effort of giving the collation.Koroke (talk) 03:20, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Folio size
There is something wrong in the table: either the size given in inches or the size given in cm, as 15 inches ≠ 48 cm. I think that there is a typo and 15 inches must be corrected to 19. At least in the sources the size of 19 or 18 is given. The sizes of quarto and octavo confirm 19 inches also. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 20:30, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

This has been corrected per the diagram. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bennyfactor (talk • contribs) 23:42, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I've added the template to the diagram and the all the table. The diagram might be based on the wrong table. Sources say 19, so 19. Moreover, 8vo, 16mo, 32mo etc. also might be wrong: must be 9½×12, 6×9½, 4¼×6 etc.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 14:04, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

I checked the table against the source, now the numbers directly correspond to the table from the ALA book of 1943. I also expanded the table according to the source.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:55, 6 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Corrected the diagram and added a new one. Now everything seems to be OK.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 17:48, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

SVG diagram file errors
File:Comparison_book_sizes.svg appears to have font aligning errors when displayed in Chrome and Firefox - the "32mo" and "64mo" text lines overlay. I believe the problems are in the file as the same errors occur with the source file viewed natively in Firefox. The 2011 revision was better in that the text did not overlap. The SVG files from Paper size all work for me. -84user (talk) 13:16, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Frankly speaking, it was badly drawn from the start, probably manually hard-coded or generated with some program ignoring any aesthetics, and though I admit the ingenuity of the original author, but the result is difficult to edit with simple WYSIWYG conventional tools like Inkscape. It was edited in 2016 by me, because the size of folio was incorrect. As I remember I edited it with Inkscape, so no wonder it may have broken somewhere. Now I've corrected it with a text editor.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:36, 2 April 2017 (UTC)