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Paper Piles

third man girl

third man girl

New Member
Is there a word to describe the thickness of a page (i.e. the thickness of the paper)? Density, grade, or whatever?

Also, is there a way to describe the way some pages are bound into large books in sheaves?

Descriptions - aagh :eek:

Third Man Girl
 
Paper has a weight. If you look at the different reams of paper in an office supply store, you'll see the weight on the wrapper. Here, in the states, it's listed in pounds, but I have no idea how they do it overseas. As for the second quesiton - huh? Not sure what you're asking.
 
Ha! A paper weight! :D

2nd question. This is hard to explain, but if you get hold of a small paperback, and (with it closed) look down on the pages from the top, the pages appear to be stuck into the spine as if they are all glued in as one pile. But if you look at most hardbacks, or the bigger paperbacks, the pages seem to be glued in, in 'bunches' several pages thick, with perhaps twenty or thirty groups of pages.

Sorry I can't explain it better. Examine your books and all will become clear! :)

I am writing a story with a VIB (Very Important Book) in it. And I want to describe the book as having these 'sections' of pages, as opposed to looking like a cheap paperback. :(

Third Man Girl
 
Hmmm, on that I have no clue as to the technical terms. I know there is something called fastback binding - I think that's what you see on the paperbacks that look like each page was stuck in. But you might search Google for that and see if you can get a definition. Sorry.
 
I don't know how to describe it, but I can tell you why it is. Please excuse me if you already know this stuff.

They take a very large piece of paper, fold it into how many sections they want, sew the spine, and cut the other edges so you have separate pages. Each of the "sections" you are talking about is one sheet of paper. Old book sizes were based on how many times the paper was folded, like folio (folded once into two sheets) or octavo (8 sheets, I think, and abbreviated as 8vo, again I think, it's been awhile.)

Also in older books, they would cut the top and bottom but leave the side together, so the first time you read the book you have to cut the pages with a penknife. You have to cut a section every 8 or 12 pages or so. This makes some edges longer than others. In the States, for a first edition or some other nice hardback, they will leave the pages uneven to mimic this look.

You can find references to this all the time, if you read any Shakespearian criticism, they will reference his early published collections by their size, i.e. 1st folio. Also, in The Great Gatsby, someone is commenting about the size of the collection in his library, and says, "He didn't go too far. The pages aren't cut." implying that they've never been read.

Sorry to be all professorial, but I find all this stuff fascinating, the creation and storage of books.

If you are interested, check out "The Book on the Bookshelf" by Henry Petroski. Not so much about how books are made, but how they are stored. It's really more fascinating than you'd think, how we arrived at the current system over hundreds of years.
 
For some reason, I seem to think that those little groups of pages are called signatures. I'm not sure, though, that that is right, or where I may have got the idea.
 
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