Publishers and their folios
James Follett
About 30-years ago when I decided that I wanted to be a writer,
I bought a copy of `The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook'. I imagined
that the mere act of placing that book on my shelf would immediately
tranform my world of mortgages and sniffling, snaffling kids into a
world of whiled away evenings in a smoking jacket in the Cafe Royal,
exchanging brilliantly witty anecdotes with fellow members of the London
illiterati, and propositioning every snake-hipped passing Pedro.
It didn't work out as expected. After about five years I took down the
TWAAY and actually read it, and discovered that in order to be a writer,
one actually had to write something. Depressing but I took its advice
and wrote something. Nothing happened. I read a bit more and found out
that one was expected to send it off to people. This marked a turning
point and I became involved in all manner of strange jargon. The good
old TWAAY warned me that publishers referred to MS pages as folios.
For the first time the TWAAY fed me bum information. In over a quarter of
a century of churning out garbage for the world's leading publishers
(Doubleday; Houghton-Mifflin; St Martins; Corgi; Methuen; Heinemann;
Random House; Weidenfeld etc) I have never heard a publisher refer to
MS pages as anything other than pages. I've folders full of editors'
notes along the lines: `Page 211, para 4. This sentence contains a verb.
Is this a mistake?'
Last week I saw at a friend's house a shiny new copy of TWAAY. Not
having seen it for yonks I opened it and discovered that little had
changed -- including the advice to writers that publishers called
MS pages `folios'. So I asked my Random House editor if she ever used
the term `folio'. Answer, no. Nor is the term used for unbound sheets --
these are called `signatures' or simply `sheets'.
About time for a spot of revision in the good old TAAWY.
--
James Follett -- novelist http://www.davew.demon.co.uk
Murray Arnow
Some are of the opinion that there is already too much revisionism in AUE.
obRaisedEyebrows: "...propositioning every snake-hipped passing Pedro."
John Doherty
| Last week I saw at a friend's house a shiny new copy of TWAAY. Not
| having seen it for yonks I opened it and discovered that little had
| changed -- including the advice to writers that publishers called
| MS pages `folios'. So I asked my Random House editor if she ever used
| the term `folio'. Answer, no.
|
| About time for a spot of revision in the good old TAAWY.
I suppose so. Either that or it's time for you to quit worrying about it,
since in this case at least, its advice is so unhelpful.
But if your editor really never uses the term at all, I'm surprised, since
it's a pretty usual term in book production, at least in my experience.
In my world, you can intelligibly use the word "folio" as a noun meaning
"a printed page number on a page of a book" or as a transitive verb
meaning "to sequentially number the pages of a book."
In the first sense, you can say "title pages don't normally have folios."
In the second sense, you can say "the publisher added a half-title, so
now the front matter has to be re-folioed."
You can also sometimes use the term "true folio." This is well-defined,
but as time goes by, fewer people seem to know what it means. FWIW, it
means the actual number of a book page, as opposed to the number that may
be assigned to that page. For example, the first page of a book, whatever
page number may be assigned to it, and whether or not that page number is
printed on it, is true folio 1, and in a book with 24 pages of front
matter, p. 1 is true folio 25.
Note that "unnumbered" is different than "unfolioed."
A page that has a page number assigned to it but not printed on it is
referred to as "unfolioed". A page that is not assigned any page number
at all is "unnumbered." Unnumbered pages aren't usual, but they aren't
all that unusual, either. Unnumbered pages are never folioed.
You can also use the term "drop folio." I'll leave that to readers'
imaginations.
In "true folio," "folio" sort of does equate to "page."
| Nor is the term used for unbound sheets -- these are called `signatures'
| or simply `sheets'.
AFAIK, "folio" was never used to refer to an unfolded sheet, and "sheet"
really isn't the same as "signature." "Signature" refers to a printed
sheet which will be folded, and "sheet" simply refers to a sheet of paper,
which may not yet have been printed and may not ever be folded.
Best regards.
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
> In article <916170...@marage.demon.co.uk>,
> ja...@marage.demon.co.uk wrote:
> >About 30-years ago when I decided that I wanted to be a writer,
> >I bought a copy of `The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook'. I imagined
> >that the mere act of placing that book on my shelf would immediately
> >tranform my world of mortgages and sniffling, snaffling kids into a
> >world of whiled away evenings in a smoking jacket in the Cafe Royal,
Things have changed at the Café Royal. Nowadays you'll see these
discreet signs posted everywhere: "Thank you for not wearing smoking
jackets."
> >exchanging brilliantly witty anecdotes with fellow members of the London
> >illiterati, and propositioning every snake-hipped passing Pedro.
[snip]
> obRaisedEyebrows: "...propositioning every snake-hipped passing Pedro."
Nothing personal, James, but any coxcomb priggish enough to insist
that the crust be removed from his toast *is* a latent heterosexual
given to ogle snake-hipped Pedros.
We Real Men eat crusts.
--
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
[A Real Man Who Eats Toast with Crust]
Santa Rosa, CA 95402, USA
http://www.sonic.net/maledicta/
John Doherty
| any coxcomb priggish enough to insist that the crust be removed from
| his toast *is* a latent heterosexual given to ogle snake-hipped Pedros.
|
| We Real Men eat crusts.
Wanna take another shot at that? Maybe you could make sense the second
time.
ObAUE: "ogle" above really ought to be "ogling," don't you think?
James Follett
ar...@iname.com "Murray Arnow" writes:
>Some are of the opinion that there is already too much revisionism in AUE.
Or not enough in the case of contributors who repost an entire article
in order to make a one line point.
Rachel Meredith Kadel-Garcia
>In article <916170...@marage.demon.co.uk>, ja...@marage.demon.co.uk wrote:
>
>| having seen it for yonks I opened it and discovered that little had
>| changed -- including the advice to writers that publishers called
>| MS pages `folios'. So I asked my Random House editor if she ever used
>| the term `folio'. Answer, no.
>|
>| About time for a spot of revision in the good old TAAWY.
>
>I suppose so. Either that or it's time for you to quit worrying about it,
>since in this case at least, its advice is so unhelpful.
>
>But if your editor really never uses the term at all, I'm surprised, since
>it's a pretty usual term in book production, at least in my experience.
>
>In my world, you can intelligibly use the word "folio" as a noun meaning
>"a printed page number on a page of a book" or as a transitive verb
>meaning "to sequentially number the pages of a book."
And in the study of medieval manuscripts and early printed books,
"folio" means a physical page, which has two sides -- the piece of
paper that has pages 1 and 2 of the text on it is folio 1; page 1 is
folio 1 recto and page 2 is folio 1 verso. "Foliate" means to number
the folios.
>| Nor is the term used for unbound sheets -- these are called `signatures'
>| or simply `sheets'.
>
>AFAIK, "folio" was never used to refer to an unfolded sheet, and "sheet"
>really isn't the same as "signature." "Signature" refers to a printed
>sheet which will be folded, and "sheet" simply refers to a sheet of paper,
>which may not yet have been printed and may not ever be folded.
And again in the study of manuscripts and early printed books,
"signature" or "quire" refers to a section of the book that is sewed
together, generally consisting of a set of "bifolia", pairs of folios
joined at the spine edge. If the work is on parchment and in a large
format, the signatures are probably not derived from a single sheet;
if it's in a smaller format or on paper, they may be; and if it's
printed on paper they probably are.
Rachel
StrayShots
>Note that "unnumbered" is different than >"unfolioed."
Does that mean that "numbering" is more different than "folioing", or less
different than "folioing"?
-- Stray...@not.for.e-mail.com --
"With my cross-bow
I shot the Albatross."
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