View source for Catchword

{{distinguish|catchphrase}}
{{otheruses}}
[[File:Brevis Commentarivs,p15.png|thumb|300px|right|The catchword (in this case the last three letters "'''dos'''" of a divided word) is at the bottom of the page]]
[[File:First page of the first tractate of the Talmud (Daf Beis of Maseches Brachos).jpg|thumb|300px|right|The first page of the Babylonian Talmud ([[Tractate Berachot]], folio 2a). The catchword "דילמא" is found at the bottom of the Talmud text (center), and the commentaries of [[Rashi]] (center left) and the [[Tosafot]] (center right) as the word will begin each text on the next page, 2b.]]

A '''catchword''' is a [[word]] placed at the foot of a handwritten or [[Printing|printed]] page that is meant to be bound along with other pages in a book. The word anticipates the first word of the following page. It was meant to help the [[bookbinder]] or printer make sure that the leaves were bound in the right order or that the pages were set up in the press in the right order.{{cn|date=September 2023}} Catchwords appear in some medieval [[manuscript]]s, and appear again in printed books late in the fifteenth century. The practice became widespread in the mid sixteenth century, and prevailed until the arrival of industrial printing techniques late in the eighteenth century.

Theodore Low Devinne's 1901 guide on ''Correct Composition'' had this to say:

<blockquote>For more than three centuries printers of books appended at the foot of every page the first word or syllable of the next page. This catchword was supposed to be needed by the reader to make clear the connection between the two pages; but the catchword is now out of use, and it is not missed.<ref>{{cite wikisource 
|first=Theodore Low
|last=De Vinne
|title=The Practice of Typography; correct composition; a treatise on spelling, abbreviations, the compounding and division of words, the proper use of figures and numerals
|wslink=Index:The practice of typography; correct composition; a treatise on spelling, abbreviations, the compounding and division of words, the proper use of figures and numerals by De Vinne, Theodore Low, 1828-1914.djvu
|year=1901
|page=142–143
|publisher=[[The Century Company]]
|scan=The practice of typography; correct composition; a treatise on spelling, abbreviations, the compounding and division of words, the proper use of figures and nummerals by De Vinne, Theodore Low, 1828-1914.djvu/156
}}</ref></blockquote>

== See also ==
* ''[[Reclamans]]''
* [[Page numbering]], a more modern system with a similar function

== Notes ==
{{Reflist}}

== References ==
{{Wiktionary}}
* De Hamel, Christopher. ''Scribes and Illuminators.'' Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. 41.
* Gaskell, Philip. ''A New Introduction to Bibliography.'' Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. 52–53.
* [[Ronald B. McKerrow|McKerrow, Ronald B]]. ''An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students.'' Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964. 82.
* Roberts, Matt T., and Don Etherington, ''[http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/don/don.html Bookbinding and the Conservation of books: A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology]''

{{Book structure}}

[[Category:Printing terminology]]
[[Category:Bookbinding]]
[[Category:Book terminology]]