A gutter is the section of the page that leads into the binding of perfect bound books and hard cover books.
Page margins gutter.
The gutter margin is a typographical term used to designate an additional margin added to a page layout to compensate for the part of the paper made unusable by the binding process.
In effect a 1 inside margin combined with a 1 gutter is the same as a 2 inside margin.
As the pages disappear towards the binding the edge of the page is obscured so the margin has to be wider on this edge to allow for this.
Gutter margins for binding.
Documents with mixed orientation.
This process will cause a curve of the pages coming from the spine when the book is open.
To set the gutter margin.
Going around the page with margins.
Mirror margins for facing pages.
This creates a gutter where the two pages join.
These two products have binding types that are clamped and held together with glue.
The more pages in a book the more pronounced this effect and so the wider the gutter has to be.
See this chart to find your.
The left gutter setting can be combined with mirror margins as shown below.
On the file menu click page setup and then click the margins tab.
Margin size depends on page count and on whether you have elements that bleed.
In the top bottom left and right boxes enter a desired measurement for the respective margin.
On the page layout tab in the page setup group click margins.
Every page has three outside margins top bottom and side and one inside margin also called the gutter.
For a typical novel or narrative nonfiction book of about 200 pages i would start off with an outside margin of 75 and a gutter margin of 875.
Vice versa for left hand pages.
So what is a gutter margin.
In a facing pages layout word refers to this type of layout as mirror margins the gutter margin is on the very inside of both pages.
Other forms of binding.
Set your page size before you set your margins.
If necessary select other options such as gutter gutter position or mirror margins.
Okay so we know the gutter or inside margin on bound books has to be larger than the outer margin but how much.
Margins ensure your text isn t cut off during manufacturing.
If you enable mirror margins with a top gutter setting it will be changed to left making it useless for duplex documents.
The gutter is used if you are going to have your book spiral bound.
This is like a no man s land area where no text will appear.
The inside margin is the left hand margin on a right hand page.
A gutter margin adds extra space to the side margin top margin or inside margins of a document that you plan to bind to help ensure that text isn t obscured by binding.
Let s take a 6 x 9 book as an example.
If you have previously set your document to the mirror margins book fold or two pages per sheet layout options word will automatically set the gutter margins to a position that matches the chosen layout.
