Dear All,
I'd like to wish everyone a happy New Year and all the best in 2003. To
mark the turn of the year, I want to contribute a poem, based on a message
that was sent recently to another mailing list I belong to.
Yours,
Ivy
How Many Pages
A cover is a cover,
and not a page.
Flyleaves are flyleaves, and not pages.
What publishers and students dictate
can vary greatly. But I agree more or less on blank pages:
they do not count.
Furthermore, I prefer bibliographic entries
with a you-are-there quality.
Inspecting printed matter when you are there,
NOTHING is held back
if you know how and where to look.
What ALWAYS should be mentioned is paged or unpaged,
hard bound or soft bound,
dust jacket or not, page count.
Are we talking a book, very slim or very thick,
landscape or portrait?
The numbering of pages starts with the first page of the book-block
(the stack of pages with the actual content). The first
actual page of a book often only carries the French Title:
the -- sometimes shortened -- title.
Being a professional book producer, any blank pages IN
BETWEEN first and last page I include in my page count,
and printing command
otherwise I wouldn't know they existed.
They also often play a role in the beginning and ending of chapters.
Then again, at the END of a book blank pages do not count.
For me and my xerox machine
(or any other printing station) the number of pages in a book ends
with the last PRINTED page. Regardless of being paged or unpaged.
Yes: blank pages are mostly of interest to the book binder.
They belong
to the binding, the wrapping
of said book.
|