Q

- Quire (or Sheet) Numbers. In Renaissance French printing an indication often appears on the title-page or in the colophon of the number of sheets making up the book, apparently to facilitate calculations of cost in the event of gross purchase, presumably within the trade; see David J. Shaw, ‘Use of Printed Quire and Sheet Letters in Sixteenth-Century France’, The Library, s. 6, vol 17 (1995), pp. 311-320. In Italian printing a similar indication sometimes appears together with the register of the book, but, despite occasional observations by bibliographers, the phenomenon has not been studied systematically.