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FOLIO

Fold the sheet. See the book.

Imposition

Before a single copy is bound, a printer lays pages onto one flat sheet — some right-side up, some deliberately upside-down — so that when the sheet is folded and trimmed, every page falls in perfect reading order.

Fold a sheet once and you get a folio: 2 leaves, 4 pages.
Fold it twice: a quarto, 4 leaves.
Three folds: an octavo, 8 leaves.
A half-sheet gathered beside a full sheet: duodecimo, 12 leaves.

Place pages on the flat sheet, fold it, and watch. Get it wrong and a page comes out backwards or out of order — no harm done, just try the fold again. Some jobs hand you an already-printed sheet with a fault hidden in it. Find it before it goes to the customer.

The Case

Ten jobs, folio to master's proof.