books

[Gerianne]

I noticed that most books don't start with "page one".
They start with page 5  or a page number as high as 12.
I have even seen page 15 as the first page number.

[lvstephanie]

That's usually up to the publisher's preference... Some will start numbering their pages with the first page after the cover such that the cover sheet is 1, the publishing sheet is 2, credit page is 3, table of contents is 4, and so the actual main content is numbered 5. Others will actually start the main content as 1, and number the "front material" (the credits, table of contents, etc.) with Roman numerals (usually lower-case). Sometimes the back material (appendices, glossary, etc.) will also be numbered with these Roman numerals, continuing the sequence where the front material left off (so that the main content has Arabic numerals and all "extra" material uses Roman). Often, the front material, although numbered in the publishing software, may suppress the actual printing of the page numbers and only start to print the numbers for the main content. This so called "blind numbering" is why it appears as though the numbers "start" at a number greater than 1; the actual numbering does indeed start with 1, but those early pages just don't have a number explicitly written on it.

[sharonpatri55]

Very interesting. I'm an avid book reader; thank you for sharing this piece of information. 

[amywang13]

Oh, I read books all the time, yet I never noticed that. 

[djohnson43]

Yeah I read books all the time and saw this too. It took me a while to figure out they were counting the acknowledgement pages and such as well.