Editorial terms – F

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F

figure: the name for a piece of illustrative artwork (graph, diagram, line drawing, photograph, etc), together with its caption.

file conversion: see typeset/typesetting

Find and Replace (Microsoft Word): a function that allows you to search for words, terms or characters and replace them with something else. It is a useful tool when performing clean-up tasks before the main work begins.

flush left/right: the text is aligned with the left or right margin.

flyleaf: a blank first or last page of a book next to the cover – not all books have these.

folio: a term used for several things: a printed page number; a sheet of typescript; and a traditional book format.

font: see typeface

footer: see running heads

footnotes: notes that appear at the bottom of the page. See also endnotes.

foreword: a recommendatory introduction written by someone other than the work’s author. Sometimes misspelt as ‘forward’.

format (n): the size of a book (height × width, in millimetres).

format (v): to lay out but not typeset in the formal sense. Formatting might include applying styles for print or for an ebook.

frankenedit: a text whose parts, chapters or sections have been edited by different editors (sometimes each as a sample) and reassembled as a whole document. The editors do not know about each other and therefore there is no possibility of collaboration, standardisation or cohesion.

frontispiece: an illustration that faces the title page in the printed version of the book. It is used to indicate the significance of the image: for instance, in a biography it may be a photo of the subject of the book.

front matter: see preliminary pages

FTP (file transfer protocol) site: a website for transmission of large files that are slow or impossible to email; an FTP site or service (for example MailBigFile or WeTransfer) will upload a file to its site, then send a notification to the recipient that the file is available for download.

full out: not indented; adjoining the left or right margin.