| has gloss | eng: Folio (abbreviated fo or 2°) is a technical term describing the format of a book, which refers to the size of leaves produced from folding a full sheet of paper on which multiple pages of text were printed. A folio is a book or pamphlet made up of one or more full sheets of paper on which four pages of text were printed, which sheets were then folded once to produce two leaves. Each leaf of a folio book thus represents one half the size of the original sheet. Ordinarily, additional printed folio sheets would be inserted inside another to form a group or "gathering" of leaves prior to binding the book. Other common book formats are quartos and octavos. Famous folios include the Gutenberg Bible, printed in about 1455, and the First Folio collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, printed in 1623. Folio also is used as a general description of size of books that are about 15 inches tall, and as such does not necessarily indicate the actual printing format of the books, which may even be unknown as is the case for many modern books. These terms are discussed in greater detail in Book sizes. |
