Within the book trade, a book's size is usually specified by the number of folds made in the large pieces of paper on which the book is printed (briefly, a book is printed on large sheets of paper which are folded, bound and then trimmed. The historical reason books were printed on a couple of large sheets of paper rather than a lot of small sheets was that it was cheaper.)

            TABLE OF BOOK SIZES

         name          height     width
---------------------------------------------
folio                    19        12     
quarto                   12         9.5
octavo                    9         6 
duodecimo (twelvemo)      7.75      5  
sextodecimo (sixteenmo)   6.75      4   

N.B.: The height and width measurements are given in inches.

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