__NOTOC__ Body text or body copy, or running text, is the

text Text may refer to: Written word * Text (literary theory) In literary theory, a text is any object that can be "read", whether this object is a work of literature, a street sign, an arrangement of buildings on a city block, or styles of clothi ...

forming the main content of a

book A book is a structured presentation of recorded information, primarily verbal and graphical, through a medium. Originally physical, electronic books and audiobooks are now existent. Physical books are objects that contain printed material, ...

magazine A magazine is a periodical literature, periodical publication, print or digital, produced on a regular schedule, that contains any of a variety of subject-oriented textual and visual content (media), content forms. Magazines are generally fin ...

web page A web page (or webpage) is a World Wide Web, Web document that is accessed in a web browser. A website typically consists of many web pages hyperlink, linked together under a common domain name. The term "web page" is therefore a metaphor of pap ...

, or any other

printed Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and Printmaking, images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabon ...

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...

work. This is as a contrast to both additional components such as headings, images, charts, footnotes etc. on each page, and also the pages of

front matter Book design is the graphic art of determining the visual and physical characteristics of a book. The design process begins after an author and editor finalize the manuscript, at which point it is passed to the production stage. During productio ...

that form the introduction to a book. Body text has two slightly different meanings, depending on context. A book designer, concerned with the overall sequence of a book, regards it as those pages that form the majority of a book, containing the ''body of text'' or '' body matter''. A

typesetter Typesetting is the composition of Written language, text for publication, display, or distribution by means of arranging metal type, physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or ''glyphs'' in digital systems representing ''char ...

concerned instead with the layout of text on a page sees 'body text' as being those sections of the main text that are flowed into columns or justified as paragraphs, as distinct from the headings and any pictures that are floated out of the main body.

Book design

The 'body matter' is the group of pages that contain the body of the text of the book. The

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

signature A signature (; from , "to sign") is a depiction of someone's name, nickname, or even a simple "X" or other mark that a person writes on documents as a proof of identity and intent. Signatures are often, but not always, Handwriting, handwritt ...

s. 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).

Typesetting

Typesetting of the body text is the work of the printer and their typesetter. Typesetting of the other parts, the front matter, and pages of the body matter involving specific design of their layout are, if budget permits, the remit of the book designer. Typesetting of the body text is generally considered to be rote work: skilled, but not inherently creative. Computer typesetting was thus first applied to body text. This represented the bulk of the work, yet also that part requiring the least human creative input.

Styles

Body text is usually typeset in a

serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ( ...

font, as these are perceived as more readable for text in dense blocks, whilst a

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...

font is used for the adjacent headings.

Web design

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

follows the 'book designer's' meaning of body text. There is an

HTML element An HTML element is a type of HTML (HyperText Markup Language) document component, one of several types of HTML nodes (there are also text nodes, comment nodes and others). The first used version of HTML was written by Tim Berners-Lee in 199 ...

named <body> that serves to delimit the body matter from the front matter (or in HTML, the <head>) that contains

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

such as the page title. The typesetting of the web page is carried out by document body elements within this. There is no specific HTML element for 'body text' in the typesetting sense. The block elements of <p> and <div> are both used for this, but these elements are used for a great many general markup purposes within HTML and so there is not usually any semantic implication that they always contain 'body'. <p> would generally be favoured over <div>.

References

{{Book structure Typography Book design