Running heads and page numbers
Take a printed book off the shelf and open it in the middle of a chapter. There is a line of small type at the top — the author's name on one side, the title on the other — and near the foot, a page number. You have read past that line thousands of times without once reading it.
That is the point. These are the furniture of a page, and they do their navigational job best when nobody notices them doing it. Authors rarely get them wrong by designing them badly. They get them wrong by leaving them switched on where they should not appear.
What a running head is
The running head is the line that repeats at the top of every text page. Set at the foot instead it is a running foot, and everything below applies the same way. Its job is to orient a reader who has opened the book in the middle.
The conventional split in a trade novel is the author's name on the left-hand page and the book's title on the right. It is not the only correct scheme, and the others are equally settled:
- Title verso, chapter title recto. The standard in nonfiction, where readers navigate rather than read straight through.
- Part title verso, chapter title recto. For a book divided into parts, this tells the reader both things at once.
- Author verso, chapter title recto. Common in collections, where the individual piece matters more than the book's title.
Pick one and hold it for the whole book. The scheme is a promise about what that line will tell the reader, and consistency matters far more than which of them you choose.
The folio
Folio is the printer's word for a page number — specifically the number as printed, not the position of the leaf in the file.
Folios sit in one of three places: the outside bottom corner, centered at the foot, or the outside top corner beside the running head. Outside corners are easiest to find with a thumb while flipping, which is why they are usual in fiction. The inside corner is not defensible — that is where the page curves into the binding, the one place a reader cannot see while holding the book open.
Where they are suppressed
This is the rule that gets broken, and it is not a matter of taste. Running heads and folios are suppressed on chapter opening pages, on part title pages, and on any blank page. They are also suppressed on the front matter pages that precede the main text — the half title, the title page, the copyright page.
Suppressed means counted but not printed. The page keeps its place in the sequence; the number is simply not set on it. So a book can open chapter two on page 47 with nothing at the top or bottom of it, and page 48 still comes next.
A running head on a chapter opener repeats a title already sitting in large type two inches below it. A folio on a blank page tells the reader that nobody set this book — the blank is supposed to read as empty. See Chapter openings and scene breaks for what else the opening page does differently.
Where a dropped folio goes
You may still want a number on a chapter opener, because a reader following an index or a note reference needs one. The answer is the dropped folio: the running head is suppressed as usual, and the page number drops to the foot of the page, centered or at the outside corner, clear of the chapter display.
It is a choice, not an obligation — many trade novels print nothing at all on an opening page. Books with indexes, endnotes or cross-references use dropped folios, because a page the reader cannot identify is a page they cannot be sent to.
In the Interior Formatter. Running heads and folios are placed from the real structure it read out of your manuscript, and suppressed on chapter openers, part titles, blanks and front matter without you having to mark a single page. Start a book → · about the Interior Formatter
Two numbering systems, one book
Front matter is numbered in lowercase roman numerals — i, ii, iii — and arabic numbering restarts at 1 on the first page of the main text. That is why chapter one opens on page 1 rather than page 11. Back matter continues the arabic run rather than starting again. What goes in the front of a book, and in what order covers which front pages get a printed numeral.
A running head must never wrap
A running head is a single line. A chapter called "On the Difficulty of Leaving Anywhere You Have Been Happy" will not fit across the measure of a 5 × 8 page at running-head size, so it wraps to two lines — which pushes the text block down on that page alone, and the spread stops aligning.
The fix is a short form you choose yourself. "On the Difficulty of Leaving" carries the sense. Chopping at a character count gives you "On the Difficulty of Leaving Anywher..." which is worse than no running head at all.
It should recede
Running heads are set smaller than the body text, usually a point or two down, and often in small capitals or letterspaced capitals rather than ordinary upper and lower case. Some books set them in italic. Folios normally match the running head in size and treatment.
The direction is the same in every case: quieter than the body, not louder. A running head in bold at body size competes with the text and wins, and the reader's eye snags on your own name at the top of every left-hand page. These lines should be findable when looked for and invisible the rest of the time. If you notice one while reading, it is wrong.
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Indents, spacing, and how paragraphs should start · Back to How to format a book interior · Also: Type size, leading and the line that reads well