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117-591: The world's first movable type printing technology for paper books was made of porcelain materials and was invented around 1040 AD in China during the Northern Song dynasty by the inventor Bi Sheng (990–1051). The earliest printed paper money with movable metal type to print the identifying code of the money was made in 1161 during the Song dynasty. In 1193, a book in the Song dynasty documented how to use

234-627: A Fenghua county officer Ma Chengde ( 馬称德 ) in Zhejiang, made 100,000 wooden movable types and printed the 43-volume Daxue Yanyi ( 《大學衍義》 ). Wooden movable types were used continually in China. Even as late as 1733, a 2300-volume Wuying Palace Collected Gems Edition ( 《武英殿聚珍版叢書》 ) was printed with 253,500 wooden movable types on order of the Qianlong Emperor , and completed in one year. A number of books printed in Tangut script during

351-426: A Yuan dynasty governmental official of Jingde County , Anhui Province , China, re-invented a method of making movable wooden types. He made more than 30,000 wooden movable types and printed 100 copies of Records of Jingde County ( 《旌德縣志》 ), a book of more than 60,000 Chinese characters . Soon afterwards, he summarized his invention in his book A method of making moveable wooden types for printing books . Although

468-413: A page is one side of a leaf. Because the actual format of many modern books cannot be determined from examination of the books, bibliographers may not use these terms in scholarly descriptions. While some form of book illustration has existed since the invention of writing, the modern Western tradition of illustration began with 15th-century block books , in which the book's text and images were cut into

585-434: A body of text being reproduced with reusable characters: it may have been produced by pressing pre-formed hieroglyphic "seals" into the soft clay. A few authors even view the disc as technically meeting all definitional criteria to represent an early incidence of movable-type printing. Bones, shells, bamboo slips, metal tablets, stone tablets, silk, as well as other materials were previously used for writing. However, following

702-413: A book for the printer, the typesetting part of the job has flowed upstream, where it is done either by separately contracting companies working for the publisher, by the publishers themselves, or even by the authors. Mergers in the book manufacturing industry mean that it is now unusual to find a bindery which is not also involved in book printing (and vice versa). If the book is a hardback its path through

819-466: A book is printed, the pages are laid out on the plate so that after the printed sheet is folded the pages will be in the correct sequence. Books tend to be manufactured nowadays in a few standard sizes. The sizes of books are usually specified as "trim size": the size of the page after the sheet has been folded and trimmed. The standard sizes result from sheet sizes (therefore machine sizes) which became popular 200 or 300 years ago, and have come to dominate

936-528: A conceptual object, a book refers to a written work of substantial length, which may be distributed either physically or digitally as an ebook . These works can be broadly classified into fiction (containing invented content, often narratives) and non-fiction (containing content intended as factual truth). A physical book may not contain such a work: for example, it may contain only drawings, engravings, photographs, puzzles, or removable content like paper dolls . It may also be left empty for personal use, as in

1053-560: A continuous roll of paper, and can consequently print more copies in a shorter time. As the production line circulates, a complete "book" is collected together in one stack of pages, and another machine carries out the folding, pleating, and stitching of the pages into bundles of signatures (sections of pages) ready to go into the gathering line. The pages of a book are printed two at a time, not as one complete book. Excess numbers are printed to make up for any spoilage due to make-readies or test pages to assure final print quality. A make-ready

1170-404: A definite number of volumes (such as a multi-volume novel), in contrast to serial or periodical publications . The history of books became an acknowledged academic discipline in the 1980s. Contributions to the field have come from textual scholarship , codicology , bibliography , philology , palaeography , art history , social history and cultural history . It aims to demonstrate that

1287-494: A form with defined boundaries; and "information architecture" like linear structure and certain textual elements) that form a "hierarchy of the book", in which formats that fulfill more criteria are considered more similar to the traditional printed book. Although in academic language a monograph is a specialist work on a single subject, in library and information science the term is used more broadly to mean any non-serial publication complete in one volume (a physical book) or

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1404-485: A hole through which a string could pass, and with these the sheets were tied together with a string to bind like a book. In woodblock printing, a relief image of an entire page is carved into blocks of wood, inked, and used to print copies of that page. It originated in the Han dynasty before 220 AD, used to print textiles and later paper, and was widely used throughout East Asia . The oldest dated book printed by this method

1521-466: A layer of whitewash applied before writing. New World codices were written as late as the 16th century (see Maya codices and Aztec codices ). Those written before the Spanish conquests seem all to have been single long sheets folded concertina-style, sometimes written on both sides of the local amatl paper. Manuscripts, handwritten and hand-copied documents, were the only form of writing before

1638-480: A metal movable type system. Gutenberg, as a goldsmith , knew techniques of cutting punches for making coins from moulds. Between 1436 and 1450 he developed hardware and techniques for casting letters from matrices using a device called the hand mould . Gutenberg's key invention and contribution to movable-type printing in Europe, the hand mould, was the first practical means of making cheap copies of letterpunches in

1755-425: A new print onto another surface, effectively making the print into a plate, is called a "cognate". Stencils , watercolor , solvents , brushes , and other tools are often used to embellish a monotype print. Monotypes can be spontaneously executed and with no previous sketch . There is still no certainty as to who was the inventor of the monotype process. The Italian artist Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609–64)

1872-438: A number of advantages over previous movable type techniques. The lead-antimony-tin alloy used by Gutenberg had half the melting temperature of bronze, making it easier to cast the type and aided the use of reusable metal matrix moulds instead of the expendable sand and clay moulds. The use of antimony alloy increased hardness of the type compared to lead and tin for improved durability of the type. The reusable metal matrix allowed

1989-411: A paragraph or more. The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms commonly used by contemporary libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books ranges from folio (the largest), to quarto (smaller) and octavo (still smaller). Historically, these terms referred to the format of

2106-553: A particular book. The earliest forms of writing were etched on tablets, transitioning to palm leaves and papyrus in ancient times. Parchment and paper later emerged as important substrates for bookmaking, introducing greater durability and accessibility. Across regions like China , the Middle East , Europe , and South Asia , diverse methods of book production evolved. The Middle Ages saw the rise of illuminated manuscripts, intricately blending text and imagery, particularly during

2223-447: A plate before printing it on paper. William Blake developed a different technique, painting on millboard in egg tempera to produce both new works and coloured impressions of his prints and book illustrations, including his Pity . Each impression was usually then worked over by hand, using ink and watercolour. Few other artists used the technique until Degas , who made several, often working on them further after printing ( Beside

2340-406: A publishing company in order to be put on the market by distributors and bookstores. The publisher negotiates a formal legal agreement with authors in order to obtain the copyright to works, then arranges for them to be produced and sold. The major steps of the publishing process are: editing and proofreading the work to be published; designing the printed book; manufacturing the books; and selling

2457-638: A single experienced worker to produce 4,000 to 5,000 individual types a day, while Wang Chen had artisans working 2 years to make 60,000 wooden types. Type-founding as practised in Europe and the West consists of three stages: The type-height varied in different countries. The Monotype Corporation Limited in London UK produced moulds in various heights: A Dutch printer's manual mentions a tiny difference between French and German Height: Tiny differences in type-height can cause quite bold images of characters. At

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2574-588: A single page, movable type printing allowed for the quick assembly of a page of text. Furthermore, these new, more compact type fonts could be reused and stored. Wang Zhen used two rotating circular tables as trays for laying out his type. The first table was separated into 24 trays in which each movable type was categorized based on a number corresponding with a rhyming pattern. The second table contained miscellaneous characters. The set of wafer-like metal stamp types could be assembled to form pages, inked, and page impressions taken from rubbings on cloth or paper. In 1322,

2691-542: A surface by rolling the seal on wet clay. Seals and stamps may have been precursors to movable type. The uneven spacing of the impressions on brick stamps found in the Mesopotamian cities of Uruk and Larsa , dating from the 2nd millennium BC , has been conjectured by some archaeologists as evidence that the stamps were made using movable type. The enigmatic Minoan Phaistos Disc of c.  1800 –1600 BC has been considered by one scholar as an early example of

2808-471: A trough level with fine sandy [clay] of the reed-growing seashore. Wood-cut letters are pressed into the sand, then the impressions become negative and form letters [moulds]. At this step, placing one trough together with another, one pours the molten bronze down into an opening. The fluid flows in, filling these negative moulds, one by one becoming type. Lastly, one scrapes and files off the irregularities, and piles them up to be arranged. A potential solution to

2925-399: A wooden spoon or the fingers which allow pressure to be controlled selectively. Monotypes can also be created by inking an entire surface and then, using brushes or rags, removing ink to create a subtractive image, e.g. creating lights from a field of opaque colour. The inks used may be oil or water-based. With oil-based inks, the paper may be dry, in which case the image has more contrast, or

3042-666: Is The Diamond Sutra (868 AD). The method (called woodcut when used in art) arrived in Europe in the early 14th century. Books (known as block-books ), as well as playing-cards and religious pictures , began to be produced by this method. Creating an entire book was a painstaking process, requiring a hand-carved block for each page, and the wooden blocks could crack if stored for too long. The Chinese inventor Bi Sheng made movable type of earthenware c.  1045 , but there are no known surviving examples of his printing. Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg independently invented movable type in Europe, along with innovations in casting

3159-505: Is a bibliophile , or colloquially a "bookworm". In its modern incarnation, a book is typically composed of many pages (commonly of paper , parchment , or vellum ) that are bound together along one edge and protected by a cover. By extension, book refers to a physical book's written, printed, or graphic contents. A single part or division of a longer written work may also be called a book , especially for some works composed in antiquity: each part of Aristotle 's Physics , for example,

3276-408: Is a block of type whose face is lower than the printing letters so that it does not itself print.). An em space was the width of a capital letter "M"—as wide as it was high—while an en space referred to a space half the width of its height (usually the dimensions for a capital "N"). Individual letters are assembled into words and lines of text with the aid of a composing stick , and the whole assembly

3393-892: Is a book. It is difficult to create a precise definition of the book that clearly delineates it from other kinds of written material across time and culture. The meaning of the term has changed substantially over time with the evolution of communication media. Historian of books James Raven has suggested that when studying how books have been used to communicate, they should be defined in a broadly inclusive way as "portable, durable, replicable and legible" means of recording and disseminating information, rather than relying on physical or contextual features. This would include, for example, ebooks, newspapers , and quipus (a form of knot-based recording historically used by cultures in Andean South America ), but not objects fixed in place such as inscribed monuments. A stricter definition

3510-629: Is a possible precursor of modern bound books. The etymology of the word codex (block of wood) suggests that it may have developed from wooden wax tablets. Scrolls made from papyrus were first used for writing in Ancient Egypt , perhaps as early as the First Dynasty , although the earliest evidence is from the account books of King Neferirkare Kakai of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2400 BC). According to Herodotus (History 5:58),

3627-540: Is a printed "check" of the Jin dynasty with two square holes for embedding two bronze movable-type characters, each selected from 1,000 different characters, such that each printed paper note has a different combination of markers. A copper-block printed note dated between 1215 and 1216 in the collection of Luo Zhenyu 's Pictorial Paper Money of the Four Dynasties , 1914, shows two special characters—one called Ziliao ,

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3744-407: Is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix , was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass . The image is then transferred onto a paper by pressing the two together, using a printing-press , brayer , baren or by techniques such as rubbing with the back of

3861-509: Is cognate with "beech". In Russian , Serbian and Macedonian , the word букварь ( bukvar' ) or буквар ( bukvar ) refers to a primary school textbook that helps young children master the techniques of reading and writing. It is thus conjectured that the earliest Indo-European writings may have been carved on beech wood. The Latin word codex , meaning a book in the modern sense (bound and with separate leaves), originally meant "block of wood". An avid reader or collector of books

3978-458: Is from Martial , in his Apophoreta CLXXXIV at the end of the first century, where he praises its compactness. However, the codex never gained much popularity in the pagan Hellenistic world, and only within the Christian community did it gain widespread use. This change happened gradually during the 3rd and 4th centuries, and the reasons for adopting the codex form of the book were several:

4095-509: Is given by UNESCO : for the purpose of recording national statistics on book production, it recommended that a book be defined as "a non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages, exclusive of the cover pages, published in the country and made available to the public", distinguishing them from other written material such as pamphlets . Kovač et al. have critiqued this definition for failing to account for new digital formats. They propose four criteria (a minimum length; textual content;

4212-414: Is now firmly established, and that Chinese-Korean technique, or a report of it traveled westward is almost certain." However, Joseph P. McDermott claimed that "No text indicates the presence or knowledge of any kind of Asian movable type or movable type imprint in Europe before 1450. The material evidence is even more conclusive." Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz , Germany, invented the printing press , using

4329-460: Is often credited as being the first artist to produce monotypes. He made brushed sketches intended as finished and final works of art. He began to make monotypes in the mid 1640s, normally working from black to white, and produced over twenty surviving ones, over half of which are set at night. It is believed that the Flemish artist Antoon Sallaert created his first monotypes in the early 1640s and

4446-498: Is the book's front matter , which includes all textual material after the front cover but not part of the book's content such as a foreword, a dedication, a table of contents and publisher data such as the book's edition or printing number and place of publication. Between the body copy and the back cover goes the end matter which would include any indices, sets of tables, diagrams, glossaries or lists of cited works (though an edited book with several authors usually places cited works at

4563-452: Is the preparatory work carried out by the pressmen to get the printing press up to the required quality of impression . Included in make-ready is the time taken to mount the plate onto the machine, clean up any mess from the previous job, and get the press up to speed. As soon as the pressman decides that the printing is correct, all the make-ready sheets will be discarded, and the press will start making books. Similar make readies take place in

4680-420: Is therefore to be regarded as the inventor of this printing process. Both artists used the new technique in different ways. Castiglione created most of his monotypes as black-field images by wiping away ink on a prepared plate thus producing white and grey lines. Sallaert, on the other hand, brushed bold, tapering lines onto the printing surface with meticulous precision. It is likely that Sallaert's monotype style

4797-408: Is tightly bound together to make up a page image called a forme , where all letter faces are exactly the same height to form a flat surface of type. The forme is mounted on a printing press , a thin coating of viscous ink is applied, and impressions are made on paper under great pressure in the press. "Sorts" is the term given to special characters not freely available in the typical type case, such as

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4914-802: The Phoenicians brought writing and papyrus to Greece around the 10th or 9th century BC. Whether made from papyrus, parchment, or paper, scrolls were the dominant writing medium in the Hellenistic , Roman, Chinese, Hebrew , and Macedonian cultures. The codex dominated in the Roman world by late antiquity , but scrolls persisted much longer in Asia. The codex is the ancestor of the modern book, consisting of sheets of uniform size bound along one edge and typically held between two covers made of some more robust material. Isidore of Seville (died 636) explained

5031-575: The Western Xia (1038–1227) period are known, of which the Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union , which was discovered in the ruins of Baisigou Square Pagoda in 1991 is believed to have been printed sometime during the reign of Emperor Renzong of Western Xia (1139–1193). It is considered by many Chinese experts to be the earliest extant example of a book printed using wooden movable type. At least 13 material finds in China indicate

5148-467: The internet means that new information is often published online rather than in printed books, for example through a digital library . " Print on demand " technologies, which make it possible to print as few as one book at a time, have made self-publishing (and vanity publishing ) much easier and more affordable, and has allowed publishers to keep low-selling books in print rather than declaring them out of print. Presently, books are typically produced by

5265-436: The "@" mark. Books A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images. Modern books are typically in codex format, composed of many pages that are bound together and protected by a cover ; they were preceded by several earlier formats, including the scroll and the tablet . The book publishing process is the series of steps involved in their creation and dissemination. As

5382-517: The Amsterdam-font would print rather bold. This was a way of keeping clients. In 1905 the Dutch governmental Algemeene Landsdrukkerij , later: "State-printery" ( Staatsdrukkerij ) decided during a reorganisation to use a standard type-height of 63 points Didot. Staatsdrukkerij-hoogte , actually Belgium-height, but this fact was not widely known. Modern, factory-produced movable type

5499-798: The Mughal era in South Asia under the patronage of rulers like Akbar and Shah Jahan. Prior to the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, made famous by the Gutenberg Bible , each text was a unique handcrafted valuable article, personalized through the design features incorporated by the scribe, owner, bookbinder, and illustrator. Its creation marked a pivotal moment for book production. Innovations like movable type and steam-powered presses accelerated manufacturing processes and contributed to increased literacy rates. Copyright protection also emerged, securing authors' rights and shaping

5616-487: The Sea, 1876-7 ); Pissarro also made several. Paul Gauguin used a variant technique involving tracing, later taken up by Paul Klee . In the twentieth century the technique became more popular; examples include the extraordinary colorful monotypes created by Marc Chagall in the 1960s. Twenty-first century examples include works by Nicole Eisenman , Christopher Wool , Karen LaMonte , and Roman Turovsky . Historically,

5733-576: The Song dynasty through the Qing dynasty. Bi Sheng (990–1051) of the Song dynasty also pioneered the use of wooden movable type around 1040 AD, as described by the Chinese scholar Shen Kuo (1031–1095). However, this technology was abandoned in favour of clay movable types due to the presence of wood grains and the unevenness of the wooden type after being soaked in ink. In 1298, Wang Zhen ( 王禎 ),

5850-441: The absence of make readies and of spoilage. Digital printing has opened up the possibility of print-on-demand, where no books are printed until after an order is received from a customer. After the signatures are folded and gathered, they move into the bindery . In the middle of last century there were still many trade binders—stand-alone binding companies which did no printing, specializing in binding alone. At that time, because of

5967-412: The bindery will involve more points of activity than if it is a paperback. Unsewn binding is now increasingly common. The signatures of a book can also be held together by " Smyth sewing " using needles, "McCain sewing", using drilled holes often used in schoolbook binding, or "notch binding", where gashes about an inch long are made at intervals through the fold in the spine of each signature. The rest of

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6084-399: The binding process is similar in all instances. Sewn and notch bound books can be bound as either hardbacks or paperbacks. "Making cases" happens off-line and prior to the book's arrival at the binding line. In the most basic case-making, two pieces of cardboard are placed onto a glued piece of cloth with a space between them into which is glued a thinner board cut to the width of the spine of

6201-438: The blocks had a limited lifespan. Gutenberg and his associates developed oil-based inks ideally suited to printing with a press on paper, and the first Latin typefaces . His method of casting type may have differed from the hand-mould used in subsequent decades. Detailed analysis of the type used in his 42-line Bible has revealed irregularities in some of the characters that cannot be attributed to ink spread or type wear under

6318-402: The book as an object, not just the text contained within it, is a conduit of interaction between readers and words. Analysis of each component part of the book can reveal its purpose, where and how it was kept, who read it, ideological and religious beliefs of the period, and whether readers interacted with the text within. Even a lack of such evidence can leave valuable clues about the nature of

6435-430: The book, a technical term used by printers and bibliographers to indicate the size of a leaf in terms of the size of the original sheet. For example, a quarto was a book printed on sheets of paper folded in half twice, with the first fold at right angles to the second, to produce 4 leaves (or 8 pages), each leaf one fourth the size of the original sheet printed – note that a leaf refers to the single piece of paper, whereas

6552-518: The book. The overlapping edges of the cloth (about 5/8" all round) are folded over the boards, and pressed down to adhere. After case-making the stack of cases will go to the foil stamping area for adding decorations and type. Bookselling is the commercial trading of books that forms the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. Accessible publishing is an approach to publishing and book design whereby books and other texts are made available in alternative formats designed to aid or replace

6669-631: The books, including marketing and promotion. Each of these steps is usually taken on by third-party companies paid by the publisher. This is in contrast to self-publishing , where an author pays for the production and distribution of their own work and manages some or all steps of the publishing process. English-language publishing is currently dominated by the so-called "Big Five" publishers: Penguin Random House , Hachette Book Group , HarperCollins , Simon & Schuster , and Macmillan Publishers . They were estimated to make up almost 60 percent of

6786-511: The case of account books , appointment books, autograph books , notebooks , diaries and sketchbooks . Books are sold at both regular stores and specialized bookstores, as well as online for delivery, and can be borrowed from libraries . The reception of books has led to a number of social consequences, including censorship . The modern book industry has seen several major changes due to new technologies, including ebooks and audiobooks (recordings of books being read aloud). Awareness of

6903-440: The case popular. Traditionally, the capital letters were stored in a separate drawer or case that was located above the case that held the other letters; this is why capital letters are called "upper case" characters while the non-capitals are "lower case". Compartments also held spacers, which are blocks of blank type used to separate words and fill out a line of type, such as em and en quads ( quadrats , or spaces. A quadrat

7020-464: The characters were cut in relief, completely differently from those cut intaglio. When printing, the bulging characters would have some ink spread on them and be covered by paper. With workers' hands moving on the back of paper gently, characters would be printed on the paper. By the Song dynasty , woodblock printing came to its heyday. Although woodblock printing played an influential role in spreading culture, there were some significant drawbacks. Carving

7137-621: The copper movable type. The oldest extant book printed with movable metal type , Jikji , was printed in Korea in 1377 during the Goryeo dynasty. The spread of both movable-type systems was, to some degree, limited to primarily East Asia. The creation of the printing press in Europe may have been influenced by various sporadic reports of movable type technology brought back to Europe by returning business people and missionaries to China. Some of these medieval European accounts are still preserved in

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7254-458: The dominance of letterpress printing, typesetting and printing took place in one location, and binding in a different factory. When type was all metal, a typical book's worth of type would be bulky, fragile and heavy. The less it was moved in this condition the better: so printing would be carried out in the same location as the typesetting. Printed sheets on the other hand could easily be moved. Now, because of increasing computerization of preparing

7371-687: The earliest written records were made on tablets. Clay tablets (flattened pieces of clay impressed with a stylus ) were used in the Ancient Near East throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age , especially for writing in cuneiform . Wax tablets (pieces of wood covered in a layer of wax) were used in classical antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages . The custom of binding several wax tablets together (Roman pugillares )

7488-422: The encyclopedic Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China ( 《古今圖書集成》 ). Each set consisted of 5,040 volumes, making a total of 322,560 volumes printed using movable type. In 1234 the first books known to have been printed in metallic type set were published in Goryeo dynasty Korea. They form a set of ritual books, Sangjeong Gogeum Yemun , compiled by Ch'oe Yun-ŭi . While these books have not survived,

7605-483: The end of each authored chapter). The inside back cover page, like that inside the front cover, is usually blank. The back cover is the usual place for the book's ISBN and maybe a photograph of the author(s)/ editor(s), perhaps with a short introduction to them. Also here often appear plot summaries, barcodes and excerpted reviews of the book. The body of the books is usually divided into parts, chapters, sections and sometimes subsections that are composed of at least

7722-491: The end of the 19th century there were only two typefoundries left in the Netherlands: Johan Enschedé & Zonen , at Haarlem , and Lettergieterij Amsterdam, voorheen Tetterode . They both had their own type-height: Enschedé: 65 23/24 points Didot, and Amsterdam: 66 1/24 points Didot—enough difference to prevent a combined use of fonts from the two typefoundries: Enschede would be too light, or otherwise

7839-589: The end of the Middle Ages, the papal library in Avignon and Paris library of the Sorbonne held only around 2,000 volumes. The rise of universities in the 13th century led to an increased demand for books, and a new system for copying appeared. The books were divided into unbound leaves ( pecia ), which were lent out to different copyists, so the speed of book production was considerably increased. The system

7956-405: The etched or engraved line on a metal plate. In the absence of any permanent features on the surface of the plate, all articulation of imagery is dependent on one unique inking, resulting in one unique print. Additionally, the term monotype is often used for an image made by inking a non-absorbent surface with a solid colour, laying over it a piece of paper and drawing onto the back of the paper. When

8073-422: The focus was on reprinting Chinese classics lost in 1126 when Korea's libraries and palaces had perished in a conflict between dynasties. Scholarly debate and speculation has occurred as to whether Eastern movable type spread to Europe between the late 14th century and early 15th centuries. For example, authoritative historians Frances Gies and Joseph Gies claimed that "The Asian priority of invention movable type

8190-424: The folding and binding areas, each involving spoilage of paper. Recent developments in book manufacturing include the development of digital printing. Book pages are printed, in much the same way as an office copier works, using toner rather than ink. Each book is printed in one pass, not as separate signatures. Digital printing has permitted the manufacture of much smaller quantities than offset, in part because of

8307-526: The format was more economical than the scroll, as both sides of the writing material can be used; and it was portable, searchable, and easier to conceal. The Christian authors may also have wanted to distinguish their writings from the pagan and Judaic texts written on scrolls. The codices of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica had the same form as the European codex, but were instead made with long folded strips of either fig bark ( amatl ) or plant fibers, often with

8424-572: The globe . The 19th-century invention of hot metal typesetting and its successors caused movable type to decline in the 20th century. The technique of imprinting multiple copies of symbols or glyphs with a master type punch made of hard metal first developed around 3000 BC in ancient Sumer . These metal punch types can be seen as precursors of the letter punches adapted in later millennia to printing with movable metal type. Cylinder seals were used in Mesopotamia to create an impression on

8541-404: The idea of losing hanja , the badge of their elitism", stifled the adoption of the new alphabet. A " Confucian prohibition on the commercialization of printing" also obstructed the proliferation of movable type, restricting the distribution of books produced using the new method to the government. The technique was restricted to use by the royal foundry for official state publications only, where

8658-893: The industry. British conventions in this regard prevail throughout the English-speaking world, except for the US. The European book manufacturing industry works to a completely different set of standards. Hardcover books have a stiff binding, while paperback books have cheaper, flexible covers which tend to be less durable. Publishers may produce low-cost pre-publication copies known as galleys or "bound proofs" for promotional purposes, such as generating reviews in advance of publication. Galleys are usually made as cheaply as possible, since they are not intended for sale. Some books, particularly those with shorter runs (i.e. with fewer copies) will be printed on sheet-fed offset presses, but most books are now printed on web presses , which are fed by

8775-470: The invention and widespread adoption of print. Advances were made in the techniques used to create them. In the early Western Roman Empire , monasteries continued Latin writing traditions related to Christianity , and the clergy were the predominant readers and copyists. The bookmaking process was long and laborious. They were usually written on parchment or vellum , writing surfaces made from processed animal skin. The parchment had to be prepared, then

8892-659: The invention of paper during the Chinese Han dynasty , writing materials became more portable and economical. Yet, copying books by hand was still labour-consuming. Not until the Xiping Era (172–178 AD), towards the end of the Eastern Han dynasty, did sealing print and monotype appear. These were used to print designs on fabrics and to print texts. By about the 8th century during the Tang dynasty , woodblock printing

9009-566: The invention of bronze movable type printing in China no later than the 12th century, with the country producing large-scale bronze-plate-printed paper money and formal official documents issued by the Jin (1115–1234) and Southern Song (1127–1279) dynasties with embedded bronze metal types for anti-counterfeit markers. Such paper-money printing might date back to the 11th-century jiaozi of Northern Song (960–1127). The typical example of this kind of bronze movable type embedded copper-block printing

9126-483: The iron plate. In this he placed the types, set close together. When the frame was full, the whole made one solid block of type. He then placed it near the fire to warm it. When the paste [at the back] was slightly melted, he took a smooth board and pressed it over the surface, so that the block of type became as even as a whetstone. For each character there were several types, and for certain common characters there were twenty or more types each, in order to be prepared for

9243-425: The late 19th century. They could set more than 6,000 letters per hour and an entire line of type at once. There have been numerous improvements in the printing press. In mid-20th century, European book production had risen to over 200,000 titles per year. During the 20th century, libraries faced an ever-increasing rate of publishing, sometimes called an information explosion . The advent of electronic publishing and

9360-620: The library archives of the Vatican and Oxford University among many others. Around 1450, German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the metal movable-type printing press, along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould . The small number of alphabetic characters needed for European languages was an important factor. Gutenberg was the first to create his type pieces from an alloy of lead , tin , and antimony —and these materials remained standard for 550 years. For alphabetic scripts , movable-type page setting

9477-615: The linguistic and cultural bottleneck that held back movable type in Korea for 200 years appeared in the early 15th century—a generation before Gutenberg would begin working on his own movable-type invention in Europe—when Sejong the Great devised a simplified alphabet of 24 characters ( hangul ) for use by the common people, which could have made the typecasting and compositing process more feasible. But Korea's cultural elite, "appalled at

9594-517: The loss of the two copper movable types. Song dynasty bronze block embedded with bronze metal movable type printed paper money was issued on a large scale and remained in circulation for a long time. The 1298 book Zao Huozi Yinshufa ( 《造活字印書法》 ) by the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) official Wang Zhen mentions tin movable type, used probably since the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), but this

9711-401: The market for general-readership books in 2021. Book design is the art of incorporating the content, style, format, design, and sequence of the various elements of a book into a coherent unit. Modern books are organized according to a particular format called the book's layout . Although there is great variation in layout, modern books tend to adhere to a set of rules with regard to what

9828-467: The materials used for the type, punch, matrix, mould and in method of making an impression. The techniques for bronze casting, used at the time for making coins (as well as bells and statues) were adapted to making metal type. The Joseon dynasty scholar Seong Hyeon (성현, 成俔, 1439–1504) records the following description of the Korean font-casting process: At first, one cuts letters in beech wood. One fills

9945-402: The method described by Shen Kuo in his Dream Pool Essays , and printed his book Notes of The Jade Hall ( 《玉堂雜記》 ). The ceramic movable type was also mentioned by Kublai Khan 's counsellor Yao Shu , who convinced his pupil Yang Gu to print language primers using this method. The claim that Bi Sheng's clay types were "fragile" and "not practical for large-scale printing" and "short lived"

10062-619: The needs of print-disabled people has led to a rise in formats designed for greater accessibility , such as braille printing and large-print editions. Google Books estimated in 2010 that approximately 130 million total unique books had been published. The word book comes from the Old English bōc , which in turn likely comes from the Germanic root * bōk- , cognate to " beech ". In Slavic languages like Russian , Bulgarian , Macedonian буква bukva —"letter"

10179-563: The oldest book existing in the world printed in metallic movable types is Jikji , printed in Korea in 1377. The Asian Reading Room of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., displays examples of this metal type. Commenting on the invention of metallic types by Koreans, French scholar Henri-Jean Martin described this as "[extremely similar] to Gutenberg's". However, Korean movable metal type printing differed from European printing in

10296-597: The other called Zihao —for the purpose of preventing counterfeiting; over the Ziliao there is a small character (輶) printed with movable copper type, while over the Zihao there is an empty square hole—apparently the associated copper metal type was lost. Another sample of Song dynasty money of the same period in the collection of the Shanghai Museum has two empty square holes above Ziliao as well as Zihou , due to

10413-427: The other hand, now refers to the results of plates that have permanent features on them. Monoprints can be thought of as variations on a theme, with the theme resulting from some permanent features being found on the plate—lines, textures—that persist from print to print. Variations are confined to those resulting from how the plate is inked prior to each print. The variations are endless, but certain permanent features on

10530-561: The pages—strong evidence that the books were printed in China. During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Hua Sui in 1490 used bronze type in printing books. In 1574 the massive 1000-volume encyclopedia Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era ( 《太平御覧》 ) was printed with bronze movable type. In 1725 the Qing dynasty government made 250,000 bronze movable-type characters and printed 64 sets of

10647-471: The paper is pulled off the resulting print consists of the line surrounded by ink picked up from the inked plate. The result has a chance element, often random and irregular which gives the print a certain charm, a technique famously used by British artist Tracey Emin , a graduate of the Royal College of Art, where the practice of monoprinting in general was regarded as "fake painting". Monoprints, on

10764-419: The paper may be damp, in which case the image has a 10 percent greater range of tones. Monotyping produces a unique print, or monotype; most of the ink is removed during the initial pressing. Although subsequent reprintings are sometimes possible, they differ greatly from the first print and are generally considered inferior. These prints from the original plate are called "ghost prints." A print made by pressing

10881-433: The parts of the layout are and what their content usually includes. A basic layout will include a front cover , a back cover and the book's content which is called its body copy or content pages . The front cover often bears the book's title (and subtitle, if any) and the name of its author or editor(s). The inside front cover page is usually left blank in both hardcover and paperback books. The next section, if present,

10998-478: The popularity of ereaders and accessibility features. While discussions about the potential decline of physical books have surfaced, print media has proven remarkably resilient, continuing to thrive as a multi-billion dollar industry. Additionally, efforts to make literature more inclusive emerged, with the development of Braille for the visually impaired and the creation of spoken books, providing alternative ways for individuals to access and enjoy literature. Some of

11115-451: The pressure of the press. Scholars conjecture that the type pieces may have been cast from a series of matrices made with a series of individual stroke punches, producing many different versions of the same glyph. It has also been suggested that the method used by Gutenberg involved using a single punch to make a mould, but the mould was such that the process of taking the type out disturbed the casting, causing variants and anomalies, and that

11232-466: The printing plate required considerable time, labour, and materials. It also was not convenient to store these plates and was difficult to correct mistakes. Bi Sheng ( 畢昇 ) (990–1051) developed the first known movable-type system for printing in China around 1040 AD during the Northern Song dynasty, using ceramic materials. As described by the Chinese scholar Shen Kuo (沈括) (1031–1095): When he wished to print, he took an iron frame and set it on

11349-400: The publishing landscape. The Late Modern Period introduced chapbooks , catering to a wider range of readers, and mechanization of the printing process further enhanced efficiency. The 20th century witnessed the advent of typewriters, computers, and desktop publishing, transforming document creation and printing. Digital advancements in the 21st century led to the rise of ebooks, propelled by

11466-685: The punch-matrix system came into use possibly around the 1470s. This raises the possibility that the development of movable type in the West may have been progressive rather than a single innovation. Gutenberg's movable-type printing system spread rapidly across Europe, from the single Mainz printing press in 1457 to 110 presses by 1480, with 50 of them in Italy . Venice quickly became the centre of typographic and printing activity. Significant contributions came from Nicolas Jenson , Francesco Griffo , Aldus Manutius , and other printers of late 15th-century Europe. Gutenberg's movable type printing system offered

11583-413: The reading process. It is particularly relevant for people who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise print-disabled . Alternative formats that have been developed to aid different people to read include varieties of larger fonts , specialized fonts for certain kinds of reading disabilities , braille, ebooks, and automated audiobooks and DAISY digital talking books. Monotype Monotyping

11700-413: The repetition of characters on the same page. When the characters were not in use he had them arranged with paper labels, one label for each rhyme-group, and kept them in wooden cases. If one were to print only two or three copies, this method would be neither simple nor easy. But for printing hundreds or thousands of copies, it was marvelously quick. As a rule he kept two forms going. While the impression

11817-577: The same block. Techniques such as engraving , etching , and lithography have also been influential. The methods used for the printing and binding of books continued fundamentally unchanged from the 15th century into the early 20th century. While there was more mechanization , a book printer in 1900 still used movable metal type assembled into words, lines, and pages to create copies. Modern paper books are printed on paper designed specifically for printing . Traditionally, book papers are off-white or low-white papers (easier to read), are opaque to minimize

11934-445: The show-through of text from one side of the page to the other and are (usually) made to tighter caliper or thickness specifications, particularly for case-bound books. Different paper qualities are used depending on the type of book: Machine finished coated papers , woodfree uncoated papers , coated fine papers and special fine papers are common paper grades. Today, the majority of books are printed by offset lithography . When

12051-475: The terms monotype and monoprint were often used interchangeably. More recently, however, they have come to refer to two different, though similar, types of printmaking. Both involve the transfer of ink from a plate to the paper, canvas, or other surface that will ultimately hold the work of art. In the case of monotypes, the plate is a featureless plate. It contains no features that will impart any definition to successive prints. The most common feature would be

12168-401: The then-current relation between a codex, book, and scroll in his Etymologiae (VI.13): "A codex is composed of many books; a book is of one scroll. It is called codex by way of metaphor from the trunks ( codex ) of trees or vines, as if it were a wooden stock, because it contains in itself a multitude of books, as it were of branches". The first written mention of the codex as a form of book

12285-508: The type based on a matrix and hand mould . This invention gradually made books less expensive to produce and more widely available. Early printed books, single sheets and images which were created before 1501 in Europe are known as incunables or incunabula . Steam-powered printing presses became popular in the early 19th century. These machines could print 1,100 sheets per hour, but workers could only set 2,000 letters per hour. Monotype and linotype typesetting machines were introduced in

12402-449: The unbound pages were planned and ruled with a blunt tool or lead, after which the text was written by a scribe , who usually left blank areas for illustration and rubrication . Finally, it was bound by a bookbinder. Because of the difficulties involved in making and copying books, they were expensive and rare. Smaller monasteries usually had only a few dozen books. By the 9th century, larger collections held around 500 volumes and even at

12519-406: The vast quantities needed to print complete books, making the movable-type printing process a viable enterprise. Before Gutenberg, scribes copied books by hand on scrolls and paper, or print-makers printed texts from hand-carved wooden blocks. Either process took a long time; even a small book could take months to complete. Because carved letters or blocks were flimsy and the wood susceptible to ink,

12636-454: The water-based Chinese calligraphic ink well, and had an added disadvantage of uneven matching of the type which could sometimes result from the uneven changes in size of the type during the baking process. There has been an ongoing debate regarding the success of ceramic printing technology as there have been no printed materials found with ceramic movable types. However, it is historically recorded to have been used as late as 1844 in China from

12753-456: The wooden type was more durable under the mechanical rigors of handling, repeated printing wore down the character faces, and the types could only be replaced by carving new pieces. This system was later enhanced by pressing wooden blocks into sand and casting metal types from the depression in copper, bronze, iron or tin. This new method overcame many of the shortcomings of woodblock printing. Rather than manually carving an individual block to print

12870-585: Was available in the late 19th century. It was held in the printing shop in a job case , a drawer about 2 inches high, a yard wide, and about two feet deep, with many small compartments for the various letters and ligatures. The most popular and accepted of the job case designs in America was the California Job Case , which took its name from the Pacific coast location of the foundries that made

12987-487: Was being made from the one form, the type was being put in place on the other. When the printing of the one form was finished, the other was then ready. In this way the two forms alternated and the printing was done with great rapidity. After his death, the ceramic movable-type passed onto his descendants. In 1193, Zhou Bida , an officer of the Southern Song dynasty, made a set of clay movable-type method according to

13104-404: Was influenced by the chiaroscuro woodcuts of the Dutch engraver Hendrik Goltzius . Sallaert found in the monotype a technique which was the closest to drawing and oil sketching. His monotypes and drawings are characterised by swelling lines and tapering ends. He often added by hand white highlights to his monotypes. Sallaert clearly appreciated in the monotype technique the freedom to design on

13221-400: Was invented and worked as follows. First, the neat hand-copied script was stuck on a relatively thick and smooth board, with the front of the paper sticking to the board, the paper being so thin it was transparent, the characters showing in reverse distinctly so that every stroke could be easily recognized. Then, carvers cut away the parts of the board that were not part of the character, so that

13338-573: Was largely experimental. It was unsatisfactory due to its incompatibility with the inking process. But by the late 15th century these concerns were resolved and bronze type was widely used in Chinese printing. During the Mongol Empire (1206–1405), printing using movable type spread from China to Central Asia. The Uyghurs of Central Asia used movable type, their script type adopted from the Mongol language, some with Chinese words printed between

13455-431: Was maintained by secular stationers guilds, which produced both religious and non-religious material. In India, bound manuscripts made of birch bark or palm leaf had existed since antiquity. The text in palm leaf manuscripts was inscribed with a knife pen on rectangular cut and cured palm leaf sheets; coloring was then applied to the surface and wiped off, leaving the ink in the incised grooves. Each sheet typically had

13572-529: Was quicker than woodblock printing . The metal type pieces were more durable and the lettering was more uniform, leading to typography and fonts . The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type in Europe and the use of printing presses spread rapidly. The printing press may be regarded as one of the key factors fostering the Renaissance and, due to its effectiveness, its use spread around

13689-477: Was refuted by later experiments. Bao Shicheng (1775–1885) wrote that baked clay moveable type was "as hard and tough as horn"; experiments show that clay type, after being baked in an oven, becomes hard and difficult to break, such that it remains intact after being dropped from a height of two metres onto a marble floor. The length of clay movable types in China was 1 to 2 centimetres, not 2 mm, thus hard as horn. But similar to metal type, ceramic type did not hold

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