I’m reading Pride and Prejudice in an earlier edition (first edition - 1923). The way the words are laid out on the page includes an interesting and very helpful little feature: the first word of the next page is printed under the last sentence on the current page, underneath the last word. The result of using this feature is that the reader is given a subtle heads-up as to the direction the sentence is leading, before the eyes actually move up to the top of the facing page, or before you turn the page. I’ve never seen that before or since, as useful as it is. There must be a name for that style or feature or whatever you might call it. What DO you call it?
I don’t know what it’s called, but it was common (or at least not uncommon) on older books. I have quite a few with this feature.
It’s a catchword.
I don’t think lexicographic is the right word for this. Typesetting, perhaps?
Ah! Thank you. Catchword. That’s a good word - and a good idea. *Yeah, I didn’t think “lexicographic” was ideal, but I didn’t have another one handy.
I have some very old books with the same feature. I think it’s a relic of the days when more books were read aloud. It gave the reader a little head start on the next page as she turned the page she was just finishing.
Fascinating! I had never heard of this before. According to its Wikipedia entry, the point of the catchword was to aid the bookbinder in ensuring that the pages were in order.
That’s a lot easier than doing a checksum on the ASCII values of the next page!
If they told you it was a first edition, ask for your money back, or check the author.
If it’s Jane Austen’s book, the first edition was issued in 1813.
I’m not as stupid as I look. I know this is not an original from 1813. This is a first edition of an Oxford University Press version of the book, from 1923, a scholarly text that was created based on the earliest editions of the original.
I sometimes do this with music . . . write in the next note or lyric at a page-turn.
Huh. I’ve never come
come across this.
If you ever read an early edition of Fanny Hill, you might, one day.
That’s not what it looks like: it would be:
The catchword from the next page is on a separate line, to mark that it doesn’t really belong on the current page.
Quite so.