Folio and Line Citation
Citing manuscripts and early printed books by leaf, side and line rather than page.
Manuscripts and early printed books were often numbered by leaf, not by page. Each leaf is a folio with two sides: recto (the front, abbreviated r) and verso (the back, v). A citation therefore reads 'fol. 12v, lines 3-7' — folio twelve, reverse side, lines three to seven.
Early printed books add signatures: gatherings marked A, B, C, with leaves numbered within them, giving forms like 'sig. B3r'. Shakespeare's First Folio is normally cited this way because its page numbering is famously erratic.
For a writer quoting from a digitised manuscript, this system is the difference between a citation a specialist can check in one click and a vague gesture at a scanned book. Most digital archives display folio numbers on the image viewer.
Common mistake: writing 'p. 12' for a folio 12, which silently claims a numbering the object does not have and can point a reader to the wrong side of the leaf.
“British Library, MS Harley 7368, fol. 9r, lines 12-18.”
Keep reading the glossary
The citation form for unpublished material held in a collection: item, folder, box, collection, repository.
A short letter code standing for a specific manuscript witness in a critical edition.
Locating a quotation by fixed internal divisions rather than by page number.
A citation that points to the exact page, paragraph, or section where a quoted or paraphrased passage appears.