Glossary

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Saddle stitching is a method of binding smaller book or pamphlets. Pages are secured by sewing or stapling down the center of the book and through the fold of the spine.

A signature (sig) is a sheet of paper printed with four or more pages of a book. It is folded to the approximate final page size and to put the pages in numerical order. The more common signature impositions are 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 pages, which are formed by folding the sheet in half one or more times. Less common are 12, 20, 24, and 36 page signatures, which require more complicated folding patterns.

At Carter Printing, signatures are identified by their position in the book. For example, the second signature in a two section, 16 page book is called “sig 2.”

Learn more about signatures here from a previous blog post. 

The spine of a book is the bound edge where the pages are sewn, glued, or otherwise fastened together. Spines are usually thin and flexible, allowing the book to be easily opened. The main types of binding are saddle stitch, coil binding, and perfect binding. 

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