What is a running head in a book?
A running head is the short line at the top of a book's pages that repeats the book's title or the current chapter's name. It often sits beside the page number. It shows a reader flipping through the pages where they are.
What it means in practice
The usual pattern is the book’s title on left-hand pages and the chapter’s name on right-hand pages. Blank pages and chapter openers go without one, and the title page, copyright page and contents have none either.
Keep the words short. A long chapter title makes a long running head, and it will crowd the page number on a small trim.
How Chapbook uses it
Chapbook sets the running head for you in the PDF and the paperback interior, in the look’s small capitals. A left-set look puts the book’s title on even pages and the chapter on odd pages, with the page number in the outer corner. A centered look centers the head and moves the page number to the foot.
It leaves the head off a chapter’s first page, off blank pages, and off every page of an activity pack, where nothing should compete with the coloring.
In the sample on this page, the Introduction’s first page has no head. Turn it and the next page reads “2” and “The Pricing Playbook”. Later, in the downloadable PDF, an odd page near the end reads “Appendix: The Interview Script” and “39”.
In a real book
Related terms
- What is front matter in a book? Front matter is the pages before a book's main text: title page, copyright, contents, and sometimes a foreword. What Chapbook adds on its own, kind by kind.
- What are widows and orphans in typesetting? A widow is a paragraph's last line stranded at the top of a page. An orphan is its first line left at the bottom. How to fix them, and how Chapbook's PDFs handle them.
Questions people ask
Should a chapter's first page have a running head?
Usually not. The chapter's title is already on the page, so a running head there would only repeat it. Chapbook leaves it off every page that opens a chapter.
Do EPUBs have running heads?
Not as part of the book. An EPUB has no fixed pages, so any header you see comes from the reading app. Chapbook sets running heads in its PDFs and paperback interiors.
Read a chapter of your own book before you pay for it.
The outline, one sample chapter up to 2,500 words and a watermarked cover are free: 60 Book Credits on sign-up, no card.