Body Text - Book Design

Book Design

The 'body matter' is the group of pages that contain the body of the text of the book. The front matter comes before it, containing title pages, content lists, publisher's metadata etc. It is followed by the back matter, which includes appendices, references, credits, colophon etc. The distinction between the parts, body and other, is that the body matter is produced by the author, the front and back matter by the publisher (through the book designer, index collator etc.). Where there is a prose introduction, it demonstrates this; an introduction by the author is considered as body matter, an introduction by an editor or other commentator is placed with the front matter. In some technical publications, appendices are so long and important as part of the book that they are a creative endeavour of the author, rather than a mere collation exercise by the publisher. In this case they may, like the introduction, be considered as a part of the body matter.

At one time, books were produced as 'letter-books', where the body of text consisted of chapters of solid text, unillustrated. Where illustrations were provided, these were costly and so plates were inserted in sections, either at the end of the body matter, or grouped within the signatures. Development in printing in the early 20th century, and particularly developments in newspaper design and the incorporation of photographs, encouraged the development of the 'picture-book' where images were mixed in the text and formed part of the body matter itself (although in most cases, this was still outside the paragraphs of the typesetter's body text).