Is this a sheet of paper or is it a page of paper? What’s the difference?
One issue that we often encounter at the shop is confusion between a sheet and a page. This makes a big difference when you are setting up a booklet or pamphlet to be printed and bound.
A sheet is the actual physical piece of paper, for example 1 sheet of 8.5″ by 11″ paper.
But, fold it in half, and each side of that 8.5″ by 11″ sheet is equal to 2 pages in a book.
In the example above we are creating a small booklet that will be 8.5″ by 5.5″. So the 8.5 by 11 sheet is folded in half and each side of the sheet becomes 2 pages. And since a sheet has 2 sides, we have 4 pages in our book – like this:
So if you ask for a quote on a 8.5″ by 5.5″ saddle-stitched booklet of 4 pages, the book you are designing will be made of 1 sheet of paper – rather thin and no need for the saddle-stitch stapling.
But, if you had asked for 4 sheets, then you would find a quote for something considerably larger. Those 4 sheets would be equal to 16 pages. This is more like a program you might receive at a play, musical, or local event.
So it’s definitely a good idea to get familiar with the differences between a sheet and a page as it will certainly save on confusion between you and your printer.
One more thing.
Don’t forget that if you are designing a booklet like the one in the above example, you will need your final page count to be divisible by 4. You don’t want to end up with extra blank pages at the end of your book. We can’t remove extra pages from a book, so it’s important you plan content for all of them from the beginning.
Hopefully this clears it up for you. If you have any questions, feel free to stop by, give us a call, or comment below.
