A page is one side of a leaf of paper

Paper

Paper is a thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon, drawing or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....

. It can be used as a measurement of documenting or recording

Recording

Recording is the process of capturing data or translating information to a recording format stored on some storage medium, which is often referred to as a record or, if an auditory medium, a recording....

 quantity ("that topic covers twelve pages").

The page in typography

In a book, the page on the left side is called the verso page and the page on the right side is called the recto

Recto

The recto and verso are respectively the "front" and "back" sides of a leaf of paper in a bound item such as a codex, book, broadsheet, or pamphlet. In languages written from left to right the recto is the right-hand page and the verso the left-hand page...

 page. The verso and the recto (the facing pages) together form what is referred to as a spread.

The first page of an English-language book is typically a recto page, and the reader flips the pages from right to left. In right-to-left languages (Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

, Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

, and Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

, plus Chinese

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

 and Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 when written vertically), the first page is verso and the reader flips the pages from left to right.

The process of placing the various text and graphical elements on the page in a visually organized way is called page layout

Page layout

Page layout is the part of graphic design that deals in the arrangement and style treatment of elements on a page.- History and development :...

, and the relative lightness or darkness of the page is referred to as its colour

Type color

In typography, type color refers to the weight or boldness of a typeface and is used by designers and typographers to describe the visual tone of a mass of text on a page. The type color of a particular typeface affects the amount of ink on the page, also known as its blackness...

.

In book typography

Typography

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...

, a “typical page” refers to a master design of a page, designed by the graphic designer

Graphic designer

A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...

 or the typographer of a book, that illustrates how similar pages in the same book can achieve a level of visual consistency. To help maintain the desired consistency, the typical page may employ a grid

Grid (typography)

A typographic grid is a two-dimensional structure made up of a series of intersecting vertical and horizontal axes used to structure content. The grid serves as an armature on which a designer can organize text and images in a rational, easy to absorb manner....

 system.

In a modern book, a page may contain a header

Page header

A page header or simply header in typography is text which is separated from the main body of text and appears at the top of a printed page...

 and a footer. Pages may or may not be numbered, but most pages are.

The pages appearing before the main text of a book (including the title page, preface, table of contents, etc.) are collectively called the front matter and those appearing after the main text (appendices, colophon, etc.), the back matter. Placement of the copyright page varies between different typographic traditions: in English-language books it belongs to the front matter; however, in Chinese and Japanese, the copyright page is part of the back matter.

In English-language typography, the size of a page is traditionally measured in a unit called the pica.

The page in library science

In library science

Library science

Library science is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and other areas to libraries; the collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination of information resources; and the...

, the number of pages in a book forms part of its physical description, coded in subfield 300$a in MARC 21 and in subfield 215$a in UNIMARC. This description consists of the number of pages (or a list of such numberings separated by commas, if the book contains separately-numbered sections), followed by the abbreviation

Abbreviation

An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase...

 “p.” for “page(s)”. The number of pages is written in the same style (Arabic or Roman numerals, uppercase or lowercase, etc.) as the numbering in each section. Unnumbered pages are not described.

For example,

XI, 2050 p.

describes a book with two sections, where section one contains 11 pages numbered using uppercase Roman numerals, and section two contains 2050 pages numbered using Arabic numerals; the total number of pages is thus 2061 pages, plus any unnumbered pages.

If the book contains too many separately-numbered sections, too many unnumbered pages, or only unnumbered pages, the librarian

Librarian

A librarian is an information professional trained in library and information science, which is the organization and management of information services or materials for those with information needs...

 may choose to describe the book as just “1 v.” (one volume) when doing original cataloguing.

The printed page in computing

In word processor

Word processor

A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....

s and spreadsheet

Spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...

s, the process of dividing a document into actual pages of paper is called pagination

Pagination

Pagination is the process of dividing information into discrete pages, either electronic pages or printed pages. Today the latter are usually simply instances of the former that have been outputted to a printing device, such as a desktop printer or a modern printing press...

. Printing a large page on multiple small pages of paper is sometimes called tiling

Tiling

Tiling may refer to:* The physical act of laying tiles* The mathematics of tessellations* The compiler optimization of loop tiling* In computing, a tiling window manager, where windows do not overlap...

.

In early computing, computer output typically consists of monospace

Monospace

Monospace may refer to:* Monospaced font, any fixed-width typefaces whose glyphs have the same width* Monospace , the name of a Unicode font which carries said characteristic...

d text neatly arranged in equal number of columns and rows on each printed page. Such pages are typically printed using line printer

Line printer

The line printer is a form of high speed impact printer in which one line of type is printed at a time. They are mostly associated with the early days of computing, but the technology is still in use...

s (or, in the case of personal computers, character (usually dot matrix

Dot matrix printer

A dot matrix printer or impact matrix printer is a type of computer printer with a print head that runs back and forth, or in an up and down motion, on the page and prints by impact, striking an ink-soaked cloth ribbon against the paper, much like the print mechanism on a typewriter...

) printers) that accepts a simple code such as ASCII

ASCII

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...

, and the end of a printed page can be indicated by a control character

Control character

In computing and telecommunication, a control character or non-printing character is a code point in a character set, that does not in itself represent a written symbol.It is in-band signaling in the context of character encoding....

 called the form feed.

Page printer

Page printer

A page printer is a type of computer printer that prints on cut sheet paper. A modern page printer may use any of various technologies, such as laser, LED or inkjet. Most modern computer printers are page printers....

s, printers

Computer printer

In computing, a printer is a peripheral which produces a text or graphics of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as local peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable or, in most new printers, a...

 that print one page at a time, typically accept page description language

Page description language

A page description language is a language that describes the appearance of a printed page in a higher level than an actual output bitmap. An overlapping term is printer control language, but it should not be confused as referring solely to Hewlett-Packard's PCL...

s. In the PostScript

PostScript

PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...

 page description language, the page being described is printed using the “showpage'’ operator

Operator (programming)

Programming languages typically support a set of operators: operations which differ from the language's functions in calling syntax and/or argument passing mode. Common examples that differ by syntax are mathematical arithmetic operations, e.g...

.