So, you’re writing a book. Great. Do you know all the parts of a book?
If not, don’t despair. The Grammar Floozy’s here to help.
Why Parts Are Important
An editor and typesetter will take care of book organization, but understanding parts of the book is sort of like learning to name our fingers and nose. “I broke my thingy,” doesn’t work well at the doctor’s office.
Similarly, “somehow, I unformatted the doo-dad—can you fix it?” isn’t what your typesetter wants to hear. Let’s make everyone’s jobs easier and learn the parts of our bodies. I mean, our books.
CMOS 1.17-1.58
Let’s take a deep-dive look at Front Matter (CMOS 1.17-1.58).
Don’t worry. One bite at a time. We won’t get through all of it today.
Front Matter
Title Pages
CMOS 1.17-1.19
The half title page contains only the title. No other information is included—not even a page number (or folio), even though the half title is usually counted as the first page of a book. It’s on the right side (recto).
The reverse (remember verso?) of the half title page, which counts as the second page of the book, is often blank. However, if the book is one in a series, we may find the series title or other information about the series here. A publisher may include an author’s other publications here, although this is less common. If the book includes a frontispiece, that illustration may appear here. If it does, the frontispiece is considered the second page.
Fun fact: if the frontispiece is printed on a different type of paper from the text, it’s not included in the page count. In this case, the half title would still be the first page, the verso would be the second, the frontispiece would not count, and the title page would still be the third page.
The title page (usually numbered as the third page of the text) should include:
- Entire title of the book
- Subtitle, if the title includes one
- Author, editor, or translator’s name(s)
- Edition number (if necessary)
- Publisher’s name and location
Type size or style should provide distinction between the title and subtitle, eliminating the need for punctuation (such as a colon).
Got it? Great. Go format your book.
Just kidding.
There’s wayyyyy more.
But like I said, we’re taking it in bites.