Author's sheet - a unit of measurement of literary work

Since people started writing, this occupation is perceived as work. And like any work, the art of pen ownership is subject to payment.

How to measure the written

Humanity carved lines on a stone, then special plaques covered with wax went into action, and later paper appeared on which information was fixed with the help of ink and goose feathers. The invention of the printed way of making books created conditions for mass replication, and quantitative evaluation became an issue that is relevant not only for authors, but also for producers of this specific product, which carries knowledge to mankind.

At present, the main unit of measurement of the volume of a printed publication is the author's sheet. The term does not say much about the details of the publishing business to a person. For most people, a sheet is just a piece of paper with text printed on it on one or both sides. In fact, the concept is much more complicated.

Why so named?

The first books in the history of mankind were published in the format In folio. To do this, a matrix was created on which the mirror images and images protruded from its main plane. The technology roughly corresponded to the one used in the creation of prints, which set the high cost of the early prints. The expression in folio is translated from Latin literally as "in a sheet," from which, in fact, the typographic term arose.

In typewritten text

In the twentieth century, writers created their works in two main ways. In addition to talent, rich imagination, life experience and high moral qualities, they needed a pen or typewriter. The poet (or writer), keen on rhymes or plot twists, was not up to counting the number of signs. He could have considered only the number of pages. Enterprises involved in the publishing business quickly established compliance, according to which the volume of the author's sheet corresponds to 22-23 pages of typewritten text. After that it became much easier to consider both the fee and the cost of the copy, based on the circulation. The concept of the page was also subject to standardization. It is considered to be filled normally if it contains approximately 30 rows (plus or minus one). At the same time in each of them there are approximately 1860 letters, symbols or spaces. The distance between the lines can be single, one-and-a-half or double, depending on this, other printing parameters change, such as the number of characters in the line, the sizes of the fields, etc. In any case, to collect the author's sheet, it was necessary to hit about forty thousand times On the keys of a typewriter. All 23 pages should have a standard size of 29.7 x 21 cm, which corresponds to the A4 format. One-sided printing.

With a computer set

It was difficult for the writers of the very recent past. The corrections led to spoiling, the texts had to be reprinted many times, then read again, find flaws, and again on a new ... It's another matter now. Convenient text editors of popular software shells facilitate the work of writers, carefully pointing to typos and syntax errors, and any editing is reduced to putting the cursor on the desired place, moreover, and the options for replacement are already selected. Not always the consequence of this convenience is the high artistic merit of the works, but technically, progress is obvious. At computer imposition the author's sheet is equal to forty thousand signs with punctuation marks and spaces. The possibilities of statistical recording of the volume of the work are included in the functions of all programs intended for textual editing and editing. Of course, you do not need to adjust the text to a round number, just an approximate match.

There is one more, approximate method of calculation used by modern prose writers. Just look at the document properties. In DOS format, one author's sheet occupies a memory capacity of 34 KB.

Graphics in the author's sheet

Everything is clear, when it comes to textual information. But in real life the situation can be more complicated. For example, most textbooks, scientific monographs or research papers can not be imagined without diagrams, tables and other graphical reinforcements of the material presented. Fiction can also be illustrated. How to calculate the author's sheets in this case? This task is somewhat more complicated, but it also has a solution.

The illustrative material is as follows: 30 dm² of their area is one author's sheet. Usually each "picture" is provided with an explanatory text, its volume is taken into account according to the usual rules. Thus, the proportion of illustrations is calculated by the ratio of their area to the total volume.

What is the translator's sheet

Translation - hard work, and it requires not only the knowledge of a foreign language, but also certain creative abilities, and in some cases also talent. Samuel Marshak, Pasternak and other poets were able to convey to our reader works by Shakespeare and other foreign authors, preserving the style, style and subtleties of the era in which the original sources were created. Not everyone, of course, be a genius, but the need for quality translations has always been, is and will be. It is noticed that the volume of the source differs from the size of the final material, therefore, when concluding a contract for this hard work, publishers apply increasing coefficients. This is done simply, the size of the author's sheet of the original is multiplied by a certain number. For the English language the coefficient is 1.2, and for the more complex in the Hungarian translation - 1.4. Of course, the final calculation is made on the basis of the size of the final result, but it is empirically established that from one page of the Portuguese text one gets about a fifth of the larger volume of the Russian.

Rhyme leaf

On the part it seems that the poets live better. Their author's sheet consists of 700 lines, regardless of their length and number of signs. However, such a counting system only seems profitable. If the question is about the payment of a fee (which is rare today), achieving such recognition is not an easy task, and it is absolutely unattainable for cunning poets who are striving to make lines shorter. When publishing a work at the expense of the author, such a system, on the contrary, is more advantageous to the publishing house, which issues an invoice based on the number of author's sheets.

All this, by the way, applies to prose writers. To create a talented work that the reader would love is very difficult. Beginning writers should think about this before calculating their future royalties.