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The term " folio" (.) has three interconnected but distinct meanings in the world of and printing: first, it is a term for a common method of arranging Paper size into book form, folding the sheet only once, and a term for a book made in this way; second, it is a general term for a sheet, leaf or page in (especially) and old books; and third, it is an approximate term for the Book size, and for a book of this size.
First, a folio (abbreviated fo or 2o) is a book or pamphlet made up of one or more full sheets of paper, on each of which four pages of text are printed, two on each side; each sheet is then folded once to produce two leaves. Each leaf of a folio book thus is one half the size of the original sheet. Ordinarily, additional printed folio sheets would be inserted inside one another to form a group or "gathering" of leaves prior to binding the book.
Second, folio is used in terms of page numbering for some books and most that are bound but without page numbers as an equivalent of "page" (both sides), "sheet" or "leaf", using " recto" and " verso" to designate the first and second sides, and (unlike the usage in printing) disregarding whether the leaf concerned is actually physically still joined with another leaf. This usually appears abbreviated: "f26r." means the first side of the 26th leaf in a book. This will be on the right hand side of the opening of any book composed in a script that is read from left to right, such as Latin script (as used in English), Cyrillic script, or Greek script, and will be opposite for books composed in a script that is read from right to left, such as Hebrew script and Arabic script.
Third, folio is also used as an approximate term for a size of book, typically about 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. Other common book formats are quarto and octavo, which are both also printing formats, involving two and three folds in the sheet respectively.
Famous folios (in both senses) include the Gutenberg Bible, printed in about 1455, and the First Folio collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, printed in 1623; however, their actual size is rather different.
There are variations in how folios are produced. For example, bibliographers call a book printed as a folio (two leaves per full sheet), but bound in gatherings of 8 leaves each, a "folio in 8s."Ronald B. McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students, Oxford 1927 and later eds., p. 28.
The Gutenberg Bible was printed in about 1455 as a folio, in which four pages of text were printed on each sheet of paper, which were then folded once. The page size is 12 x 17.5 inches (307 x 445 mm), a "double folio" size. Several such folded conjugate pairs of leaves were inserted inside one another to produce the sections or gatherings, which were then sewn together to form the final book. Shakespeare's First Folio edition is printed as a folio and has a page height of 12.5 inches (320 mm), making it a rather small folio size.
Folios were a common format of books printed in the incunabula period (books printed before 1501), although the earliest printed book, surviving only as a fragment of a leaf, is a quarto. The British Library Incunabula Short Title Catalogue lists about 28,100 different editions of surviving books, pamphlets and broadsides (some fragmentary only) printed before 1501, of which about 8,600 are folios, representing just over 30 percent of all works in the catalogue.
In the discussion of two-columned manuscripts, a/b/c/d can denote the left- and right-hand columns of recto and verso pages (e.g. "f. 150a" and "f. 150b" are the left and right columns on the recto page, and "f. 150c" and "f. 150d" the left and right columns on the verso page). In the discussion of three-columned manuscripts, notation may make use of folio number + recto/verso + column a/b/c (e.g. "f. 3 v. col. c" references the third column on the verso side of the third folio).
From the mid-nineteenth century, technology permitted the manufacture of large sheets or rolls of paper on which books were printed, many text pages at a time. As a result, it became nearly impossible to determine the actual format (i.e., number of leaves formed from each sheet fed into a press). The term "folio" as applied to such books may refer simply to the size, i.e., books that are approximately 15 inches (38 cm) tall.
The term folio in the modern context of paper size commonly refers to foolscap folio, which is print paper sized 8.5×13.5 in (216×343 mm), slightly larger (by 18.7%) than A4 paper.
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