Eron Johnson Antiques: Online Catalogue - Glossary

4to: A book that is up to 12" tall. Quarto
8vo: A book that is up to 9.25" tall. Octavo.
12mo: A book that is up to 7.75" tall. Duodecimo.
16mo: A book that is up to 6.75" tall. Sextodecimo.
24mo: A book that is up to 5.75" tall.
32mo: A book that is up to 5" tall.
48mo: A book that is up to 4" tall.
64mo: A book that is up to 3" tall.
Folio: A book that is up to 15" tall.
Elephant Folio: A book that is up to 23" tall.
Atlas Folio: A book that is up to 25" tall.
Double Elephant Folio: A book that is up to 50" tall.
Backstrip: The covering of a book's spine.
Bibliophile: A lover of books.
Bibliophobia: A fear of books.
Blind-stamping: An impressed mark, decoration or lettering, not colored or gilded, usually appearing on the binding.
Bowed: A condition of the covers or boards of a hard cover book. Bowed covers may turned inward toward the leaves or outward away from the leaves. The condition generally results from a rapid change in the level of moisture in the air and is caused by different rates of expansion or contraction of the paste-down and the outer material covering the board.
Chipped: Used to describe where small pieces are missing or where fraying has occurred on the dust jacket or the edge of the paperback.
Cocked: Also shelf cocked. A condition resulting from storing a book on a shelf so that it leans and rests against its neighbor or the side of a bookcase. Gravity deforms the book binding. Cocked also refers to a book in which the spine no longer remains at right angles to the covers.
Colophon: An identifying inscription or emblem from the printer or publisher appearing at the end of the book. Also the emblem at the bottom of the spine on both the book and dustwrapper as well as a logo on the title ot copyright page.
Deckle Edges: Another term for uncut or untrimmed edges.
Dents: Damage to the edges of the cover of hardcover books.
Dust Jacket: A term synonymous with dust wrapper, indicating the ususually decorative paper wrapper placed around a book to protect the binding.
End Papers: The sheets of paper pasted onto the inner covers, joining the book block to the covers. One side of the sheet is pasted to the inside covers, the other is left free.
Flyleaf: A blank leaf, sometimes more than one, following the front free endpape, or at the end of a book where there is not sufficient text to fill out the last few pages.
Foxed or Foxing: Brown spotting of the paper caused by a chemical reaction, generally found in 19th century books, particularly in steel engravings of the period.
Front matter: The pages preceding the text of the book, in the following order:
Bastard title or fly title
Frontispiece title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Preface or forward
Table of contents
List of illustrations
Introduction
Acknowledgments
Half-title
Gathering: A group of sheets folded together for sewing or gluing into the binding
Half Binding: A book in which the spine and corners are bound in a different material (frequently leather) than the rest of the covers.
Headpiece: A decorative type ornament found at the start of a chapter or division of a book.
Impression: A much misused term, but one that, when accurately employed, means the number of copies printed during any given press run.
Imprint: A term that can refer either to the place of publication or to the publisher.
Interleaved: When blank leaves alternate with the printed leaves of a book it is said to be interleaved.
Morocco: A type of leather made from goatskins, especially suitable for book bindings because of its durability and beauty.
Plates: Whole page illustrations printed separately from the text. Illustrations printed in the text pages are called cuts.
Raised Band: The raised area on the spine concealing a cord which is attached to the covers. In earlier leather books cords were really used. In some modern books the raised bands are purely decorative and conceal no underlying cord.
Shaken: An adjective describing a book whose pages are beginning to come loose from the binding.
Shelf Wear: The wear that occurs as a book is placed onto and removed from a shelf. It may be the tail (bottom) edge of the covers as they rub against the shelf, to the dust jacket or exterior of the covers (when no dust jacket is present) as the book rubs against its neighbors, or to the head of the spine which some use to pull the book from the shelf.
Signature: in bookmaking, this does not mean the author's name written out in his hand, which is referred to as inscribed. It refers rather to a group of a pages produced by folding a single printed sheet, ready for sewing or gluing into a book.
Tailpiece: Decorative typography ornament on the lower part of a page at the end of a chapter or poem.
Three-decker: A book in three volumes, almost exclusively used to describe Victorian novels of the late 19th century.
Unpaginated: The pages are not numbered (although each signature may be designated by a letter).

GLOSSARY of BOOK TERMS