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Showing posts from December 2, 2009

Page Numbering Revisited

A nyone who has read this blog very long knows that page numbering is a pet peeve of mine. Admittedly, I almost numbered a book wrong the other day, so I understand that mistakes can be made. My real issue is with people who number a book incorrectly with no intention of trying to do it correctly. There are several publishers out there who make no distinction between the front matter and the text other than that they may leave off the numbers for the front matter or use lowercase roman numerals, but the result is that the text of the book could end up beginning on page 7 or 11 or some strange number that seems out of place. I found one publisher, NESFA Press, that even says in their style guide that they do not start renumbering with the first page of the text. Their actual statement says, “We do not re-start numbering with the first story page. (If it really bothers the editor not to use Roman numerals on the front matter, OK, but the pages are still numbered consecutively in one s...