In publishing, a colophon describes details of the production of a book. This information generally includes the typefaces used, and often the names of their designers; the paper, ink and details of the binding materials and methods may also receive mention. In the case of technical books, a colophon may specify the software used to prepare the text and diagrams for publication. Detailed colophons are a characteristic feature of limited edition and private press printing. This article is concerned with the production of books, magazines, and other literary material (whether in printed or electronic formats). ... Look up book in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In typography, a typeface consists of a co-ordinated set of grapheme (i. ... Computer software (or simply software) refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of a computer for some purpose. ... Private Press is a term used in the field of book collecting to describe a printing press operated as a personal enthusiasm, rather than as a purely commercial venture. ...

If a book has a colophon, it may appear either on the same page as the copyright information, or at the back of the volume. In early printed books the colophon follows the explicit, the final words of the text. A printer's or publisher's device on the title page or spine is sometimes loosely called the colophon. The title page of a book, abbreviated t. ...

Some Web pages also have colophons, which frequently contain (X)HTML, CSS, or usability standards compliance information and links to Web site validation tests. The Extensible HyperText Markup Language, or XHTML, is a markup language that has the same expressive possibilities as HTML, but a stricter syntax. ... A piece of HTML code with syntax highlighting In computing, HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language designed for the creation of web pages with hypertext and other information to be displayed in a web browser. ... In computing, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language. ... Usability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal. ... The word validation has several related meanings: In general, validation is the process of checking if something satisfies a certain criterion. ...

The term "colophon" derives from the Late Latin colophon, from the Greek κολοφων (meaning "summit", "top", or "finishing"). It should not be confused with Colophon, an ancient city in Asia Minor, the name of which derives from the Latin colophonium, meaning "colophony", or rosin(ronnel). Vulgar Latin (in Latin, sermo vulgaris) is a blanket term covering the vernacular dialects of the Latin language spoken mostly in the western provinces of the Roman Empire until those dialects, diverging still further, evolved into the early Romance languages — a distinction usually assigned to about the ninth century. ... There are two definitions of the word colophon: (1) an ancient Greek city, and (2) a tablet inscription placed at the end of an ancient Near East book or manuscript. ... Anatolia (Greek: ανατολη anatole, rising of the sun or East; compare Orient and Levant, by popular etymology Turkish Anadolu to ana mother and dolu filled), also called by the Latin name of Asia Minor, is a region of Southwest Asia which corresponds today to the Asian portion of Turkey. ... A 20 g cake of amber violin bow rosin. ...

The term derives from a tablet inscription appended by a scribe to the end of an ancient near east (e.g., Early/Middle/Late Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanite) text such as a chapter, book, manuscript, or record. The colophon usually contained facts relative to the text such as associated person(s) (e.g., the scribe, owner, or commissioner of the tablet), literary contents (e.g., a title, "catch" phrase, number of lines), and occasion or purpose of writing.

Positionally, a colophon is comparable to a signature line in our own times. Bibliographically, however, colophons more closely resemble the title page in a modern book. In the ancient near east, scribes typically recorded information on clay tablets. Colophons and "catch phrases" (repeated phrases) helped them to organize and identify various tablets, and to keep related tablets together.

References

• Hamilton, Victor P. (1990). The Book of Genesis 1-17, pp. 5-6. New International Commentary on the Old Testament Series, Eerdmans.