Lövformat

Lövformat is a traditional term used in Swedish bibliographic and library practice to describe the physical size and structure of a book or manuscript, based on the way sheets are folded into leaves. The word löv means "leaf" in Swedish, and lövformat refers to a format category that historically reflected how many leaves were produced from a sheet through folding and binding. In practice, lövformat is closely related to the familiar English terms folio, quarto, octavo, and smaller sizes, which describe the same idea in different naming conventions.

The concept originated in the era of hand-press printing when book size and binding were closely tied to the printing and binding process. Catalogers and antique book traders used lövformat to give a quick sense of the book’s bulk and handling characteristics, as well as its production scale. A book described as belonging to a certain lövformat would typically indicate a rough range of height and leaf count, often corresponding to common formats used at the time.

Today, lövformat is mostly of historical and bibliographic interest. Modern cataloging generally relies on precise measurements (height in millimeters, format codes) rather than broad format labels. However, in older library catalogs and rare-book descriptions, lövformat may still appear as part of a fuller physical description, sometimes accompanied by a designation such as octavo or duodecimo to indicate the expected leaf count relative to the sheet.

See also: folio, quarto, octavo, duodecimo, bibliographic format.