Title (publishing)

The title of a book, or any other published text or work of art, is a name for the work which is usually chosen by the author. A title can be used to identify the work, to put it in context, to convey a minimal summary of its contents, and to pique the reader's curiosity. Some works supplement the title with a subtitle. Texts without separate titles may be referred to by their incipit (first word), especially those produced before the practice of titling became popular. During development, a work may be referred to by a temporary working title. A piece of legislation may have both a short title and a long title. In library cataloging, a uniform title is assigned to a work whose title is ambiguous. In book design, the title is typically shown on the spine, the front cover, and the title page. The first books, such as the Five Books of Moses, in Hebrew Torah, did not have titles. They were referred to by their incipit: Be-reshit, "In the beginning" (Genesis), Va-yikra, "And He [God] called" (Leviticus). The concept of a title is a step in the development of the modern book. In Ancient Greek Literature, books have one-word titles that are not the initial words: new words, but following grammatical principles. The Iliad is the story of Ilion (Troy), the Trojan War; the Odysseia (Odyssey) that of Odysseus (Ulysses). The first history book in the modern sense, Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, had no more title than Historiai (Histories or Stories). When books take the form of a scroll or roll, as in the case of the Torah or the Five Megillot, it is impractical to single out an initial page. The first page, rolled up, would not be fully visible unless unrolled. For that reason, scrolls are marked with external identifying decorations. A book with pages is not a scroll, but a codex, a stack of pages bound together through binding on one edge. Codices (plural of "codex") are much more recent than scrolls, and replaced them because codices are easier to use. The title "page" is a consequence of a bound book having pages.