Book Anatomy
This anatomically named part faces out when a book is placed on a shelf.
What is the spine?
This German goldsmith invented the first printing press in Europe, making books more available to the common person.
Who is Johannes Gutenberg?
This is a binding characterized by a visible piece of plastic or wire, looped through die-cut holes at one edge of the text block.
What is spiral binding?
This word is derived from many languages, including the Old English boc.
What is "book"?
What is 16?
You don't want anything to fall into this space where pages meet in the middle of a book.
What is the gutter?
The Book of Kells is an example of this type of precious volume, which Christian monks spent countless hours copying and illustrating.
What is an illuminated manuscript?
This is another name for casebinding, so called for the fabric that is glued to and secures the case pieces.
What is cloth binding?
From the Latin premere, to press, we get the Old French preinte, which led to this word in English.
What is "print"?
Following only behind the Bible and Quotations from the Works of Mao Tse-tung, this series has sold the most books in the world in the last fifty years.
These decorative, often fabric additions hide the folds where signatures join together.
What are the head and tail bands?
This method of printing, developed in the 1700s, replaced wood block printing, and is derived from the Greek lithos, meaning "stone," and graphein, meaning "writing."
What is lithography?
This stitched binding is named for the man who invented the sewing machine that automated its manufacture.
What is Smyth sewn binding?
From the Greek tomos, meaning a section, roll of papyrus, or volume.
What is a "tome"?
This spidery term is the name for the giant roll of paper fed into a modern book printer.
What is a web?
The anatomical name for the place where the case hinges open and shut.
What is the joint (also accepted hinge)?
This uneven edge to a text block, today used decoratively, originated from books in the 17th and 18th centuries being sold with raw, uncut signatures.
What is a deckled edge?
This "violent" method of binding comes from Japan and is often equally decorative and functional.
What is stab binding?
The Latin volvere, to roll, evolved into the noun form, a roll (as in roll of parchment), today used to describe a single book in a larger collection.
What is a "volume"?
If the right page is a recto, the left page is called this.
What is a verso?
The free-floating, loose page of the endpaper is called this.
What is the flyleaf?
Though papyrus was used as a writing material for more than 3,000 years, it was eventually replaced by this material, made from treated, untanned hides, invented by ancient Greeks in what is now Turkey.
What is parchment?
This visible binding was invented in ancient Egypt and is distinctive for its braided appearance.
What is Coptic binding?
Derived from the Latin pergamina, a writing material, and Parthica pellis, a scarlet leather.
What is "parchment"?
Bibliopegy is the practice of this.
What is bookbinding?