Catchword

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Catchword is also a name for a headword in a dictionary.

For the game show, see Catchword (game show).

A catchword is a word placed at the foot of a handwritten or printed page that is meant to be bound along with other pages in a book. The word anticipates the first word of the following page. It was meant to help the bookbinder (in the case of manuscripts) or the printer (in the case of printed books) make sure that the leaves were bound in the right order or that the pages were set up in the press in the right order. Catchwords appear in some medieval manuscripts, and appear again in printed books late in the fifteenth century. The practice became widespread in the mid sixteenth century, and prevailed until the arrival of industrial printing techniques late in the eighteenth century.

[edit] See also

• Catch-phrase

[edit] References

• De Hamel, Christopher. Scribes and Illuminators. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. 41.
• Gaskell, Gaskell. A New Introduction to Bibliography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. 52-53.
• McKerrow, Ronald B. An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964. 82.
• Roberts, Matt T., and Don Etherington, Bookbinding and the Conservation of books: A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology