Re: Margins

[Marc Hohl]

Anthony W. Youngman schrieb:
> I don't know there is one. Why should there be?
>
> Just like a page has a top and bottom margin, and your usable area is 
> usually what's left (but may lose some to a header and/or footer 
> space), so from left to right you normally have left and right margin 
> with usable area being what's left, you sometimes lose some of that to 
> the binding margin.
I don't know the proper english names for it, but there is a inner and a 
outer margin, in Germany there are
distinct typographic terms: Außensteg (for outer margin) and Bundsteg 
(for inner margin).

If you open a book and look at two pages, the left margin on the left 
page and the right margin on the right page
are the outer margins, whereas the right margin on the left page and the 
left margin on the right page
are called inner margin. Additionally, you need some binding correction, 
i.e. a part of the page that is used
for binding and isn't visible any more and sometimes even an optical 
binding correction when the book
has many pages, so the pages are sort of bent in the middle and don't 
lie flat on the table, so the
inner margin looks smaller than he really is.

On single-sided pages, you have no inner or outer margin, but you may 
have a binding correction as well.

I haven't found any sources in english, but there is an article in 
German on wikipedia:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satzspiegel


Marc
> I'll use American sizes for easy maths, but lets say you have a 1/2" 
> binding margin, that leaves you with an 8" wide page. If you now have 
> 1/2" left and right margins that leaves you with 7" of usable space. 
> And you'd spec that as '1/2" left and right, and 1/2" binding 
> margins'. That says everything that needs to be said.
>
> Cheers,
> Wol