The incipit of a text, such as a poem, song, or book, is its first few words or opening line. Before the development of titles, texts were often referred to by their incipits. Incipit comes from the Latin for "it begins". In the medieval period, incipits were often written in a different script or color from the rest of the work of which they were a part. Though incipit is Latin, the practice of the incipit predates classical antiquity by several millennia, and can be found in various parts of the world. Today, incipits are most commonly used to refer to untitled poems and songs. Incipits are also used in catalogs of music, particularly catalogs of symphonies. In cataloging sypmphonies, the incipit is the first four bars of the first violin part of the score. Poetry (ancient Greek: poieo = create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... A song is a relatively short musical composition. ... A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other material, usually fastened together to hinge at one side, and rots your brain. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. ... For the origin and evolution of fonts, see History of western typography. ... Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, which begins roughly with the earliest-recorded Greek poetry of Homer (7th century BC), and continues through the rise of Christianity and the fall of the Western Roman Empire (5th century AD... In musical notation, a bar or measure is a segment of time defined as a given number of beats of a given duration. ...

Early uses of incipits

Hebrew incipits

Many books in the Hebrew Bible are named in Hebrew using incipits. For instance, the first book is called Bereshit ("In the beginning ..."), a name which was translated directly into Greek for the Septuagint and from there into English as "Genesis". However, this convention was not followed for most of the other books; for instance, Lamentations (which begins "How lonely sits the city ...") is called in Hebrew Eykhah ("How"). 11th century manuscript of the Hebrew Bible with Targum This article is about the term Hebrew Bible. For the Hebrew Bible itself, see Tanakh (Jewish tradition) or Old Testament (Christian tradition). ... “Hebrew” redirects here. ... The Septuagint: A page from Codex vaticanus, the basis of Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brentons English translation. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Genesis (Hebrew: , Greek: Γένεσις, meaning birth, creation, cause, beginning, source or origin) is the first book of the Torah, the Tanakh, and the Old Testament. ... The Book of Lamentations is a book of the Bible Old Testament and Jewish Tanakh. ...

All the names of parshiot are incipits. In Jewish services, a Parsha or Parshah or Parashah, פרשה, meaning Portion in Hebrew, is the weekly Torah reading text selection. ...

Sumerian incipits

In the clay tablet archives of Sumer, catalogs of documents were kept by making special catalog tablets containing the incipits of a given collection of tablets. Small tablets made out of clay were used from late 4th millennium BC onwards as a writing medium in Sumerian, Mesopotamian, Hittite, and Minoan/Mycenaean civilizations. ... Archive of the AMVC hahahahaAn archive refers to a collection of records, and also refers to the location in which these records are kept. ... Sumer (or Å umer) was the earliest known civilization of the ancient Near East, located in the southern part of Mesopotamia (southeastern Iran) from the time of the earliest records in the mid 4th millennium BC until the rise of Babylonia in the late 3rd millennium BC. The term Sumerian applies...

The catalog was meant to be used by the very limited number of official scribes who had access to the archives, and the width of a clay tablet and its resolution did not permit long entries. This is a Sumerian example from Lerner: This is about scribe, the profession. ...

Honored and noble warrior

Where are the sheep

Where are the wild oxen

And with you I did not

In our city

In former days

Incipits and titles of Papal Documents

Catholic Church Documents issued by the Holy See (either by the Pope himself or by Congregations of the Roman Curia), or by an Ecumenical Council, are generally named after the initial words of the text in its original official Language of promulgation (usually Latin). Thus, Pontifical Documents are named after the incipit. Topics in Christianity Movements · Denominations Ecumenism · Preaching · Prayer Music · Liturgy · Calendar Symbols · Art · Criticism Important figures Apostle Paul · Church Fathers Constantine · Athanasius · Augustine Anselm · Aquinas · Palamas · Wycliffe Tyndale · Luther · Calvin · Wesley Arius · Marcion of Sinope Pope · Archbishop of Canterbury Patriarch of Constantinople Christianity Portal This box:      The Pope of Rome... The Roman Curia — usually called the Vatican — is the administrative apparatus of the Holy See, coordinating and providing the necessary organisation for the correct functioning of the Catholic Church and the achievement of its goals. ... In Christianity, an Ecumenical Council or general council is a meeting of the bishops of the whole church convened to discuss and settle matters of Church doctrine and practice. ...

A few examples: the Decree of the Council of Trent on marriages, known as "Tametsi" (Although in Latin), the Encyclical of Pope John Paul II on the Eucharist, known as Ecclesia de Eucharistia (from the first sentence in Latin: "Ecclesia de Eucharistia vivit"); the Motu Proprio written in Italian known as "Il rapido svullipo" (The rapid development), etc.

It has become commonplace to refer informally to the incipit of a Pontifical Document as its title. In reallity, as the above example of the decree of the Council of Trent on marriages indicates, the incipit often does not make sense isolated, and in other cases is not representative of the content of the document. Therefore, it is not properly a title.

The practice of naming Church documents after de words of the incipit is centuries old, and continues to this day. Often, apart from being named after the incipit, documents will also have an official subject placed above the text (in the way titles are written above the text), but this "subject" line is usually lesser known.

For instance, Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical has the words of its subject De Christiano Amore (On Christian Love, in Latin), placed above the text, in the manner of a title. But the Encyclical is instead known by the first words of the text proper: Deus Caritas est (God is love).Formally, one would refer to the Encyclical as "The Encyclical Letter of Pope Benedict XVI on Christian Love, that begins with the words 'Deus Caritas est'". However, informally, one says: "The Encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI on Christian Love, 'Deus Caritas est'", or even more commonly "the Encyclical 'Deus Caritas est'", and thus the words of the incipit are commonly treated as a title.

Other modern uses of incipits

The idea of choosing a few words or a phrase or two, which would be placed on the spine of a book and its cover, developed slowly with the birth of printing, and the idea of a title page with a short title and subtitle came centuries later, replacing earlier, more verbose titles. For other articles which might have the same name, see Print (disambiguation). ...

The modern use of standardized titles, combined with the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD), have made the incipit obsolete as a tool for organizing information in libraries. The International Standard Bibliographic Description or ISBD is a set of rules produced by the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) to describe a wide range of library materials, within the context of a catalog. ...

However, incipits are still used to refer to untitled poems, songs, and prayers, such as Gregorian chants, operatic arias, many prayers and hymns, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson. That such a use is an incipit and not a title is most obvious when the line breaks off in the middle of a grammatical unit (e.g. Shakespeare's sonnet 55 "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments"). Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song of the Roman Catholic Church. ... The Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Italy. ... This article does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Shakespeare redirects here. ... Francesco Petrarca, or Petrarch, one of the best-known early Italian sonnet writers. ...

On many word processors, incipits are also used: the "save" dialog box proposes the document's first few words as the default file name, assuming that these may correspond to the intented title of the document. A word processor (also more formally known as a document preparation system) is a computer application used for the production (including composition, editing, formatting, and possibly printing) of any sort of viewable or printed material. ...

References

• Barreau, Deborah K.; Nardi, Bonnie. "Finding and Reminding: File Organization From the desktop". SigChi Bulletin. July 1995. Vol. 27. No. 3. pp. 39-43
• Casson, Lionel. Libraries in the Ancient World. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-300-08809-4. ISBN 0-300-09721-2.
• Lerner, Frederick Andrew. The Story of Libraries: From the Invention of Writing to the Computer Age. New York: Continuum, 1998. ISBN 0-8264-1114-2. ISBN 0-8264-1325-0.
• Malone, Thomas W. "How do people organize their desks? Implications for the design of Office Information Systems". ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems. Vol. 1. No. 1 January 1983. pp 99-112.
• Nardi, Bonnie; Barreau, Deborah K. "Finding and Reminding Revisited: Appropriate metaphors for File Organization at the Desktop". SigChi Bulletin. January 1997. Vol. 29. No. 1.