From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base
Body text
Text forming the main content of a printed or digital work
Text forming the main content of a printed or digital work
NOTOC Body text or body copy, or running text, is the text forming the main content of a book, magazine, web page, or any other printed or digital 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 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.{{Cite book |author-link=Adrian Wilson (book designer) |orig-year=1967
Book design
The 'body matter' is the group of pages that contain the body of the text of the book. The front matter 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',{{Cite book |author-link=Jan Tschichold |orig-year=1928
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 font, as these are perceived as more readable for text in dense blocks,{{Cite book
Web design
HTML follows the 'book designer's' meaning of body text. There is an HTML element named that serves to delimit the body matter from the front matter (or in HTML, the) that contains metadata 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 and 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'. would generally be favoured over.
References
This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.
Ask Mako anything about Body text — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.
Research with MakoFree with your Surf account
Create a free account to save articles, ask Mako questions, and organize your research.
Sign up freeThis content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.
Report