Bookbinding

One word on this list is read wrongly by almost every English speaker. Die Broschur is not a brochure. It is a way of binding a book: the leaves gathered into a block and a soft card cover drawn round the spine, the paperback construction as a whole. The leaflet on a hotel counter is die Broschüre, with an umlaut, and the two are relatives rather than strangers — both go back to the French verb brocher, to stitch — which is exactly why the slip is so easy. A publisher’s catalogue that lists a title as Broschur, or a price list that says broschiert, is describing the object in your hand and means paperback, not pamphlet. Opposite it stands the hardback, a text block hung into die Buchdecke. The rest of the list is about what neither word shows: why one book opens flat for a lifetime and another fights back from the first day.