Darkening or Fading |
Tanning or color loss due to age or sun exposure. |
Foxing |
Dark spots, fairly common in books that are very old or printed on lesser quality
paper, and greatly exacerbated by exposure to light, moisture, and/or soil. Tends
to appear first on edges and end papers. |
Rubbing |
Can range from small wear spots affecting only gloss to material loss. |
Shelf wear / edge wear |
The loss of gloss, color and/or minor chipping resulting from handling. |
Bumps |
Any damage caused by impact with another object.
These are common to edges and corners. Bumped cover surfaces are more
visible viewed at an angle to the light. |
Dog Ears |
Corner of a page is creased. Often this occurs with improper
storage or handling, and some people dog-ear pages in order to find where
they left off reading. |
Chipping |
The loss of small bits of paper, usually along edges. |
Brittle |
The paper is dry and delicate due to age or exposure damage. |
Warp |
Wavy distortion of the cover and/or text block. Water damage. Sometimes caused by damp storage conditions. |
Slant |
The spine (and therefore the text block) is leaning; the binding is not at a
right angle to the covers. |
Binding errors |
Text block not centered inside covers, boards at odd angles to the spine, wrinkles
in cloth or paper covering, gutters too short or too loose, pages out of order or
upside-down. Errors are often corrected early in a print run. |
Loose |
Hinges are weak, or pages are starting to come loose from
the binding. |
Broken |
The binding is cracked or completely separated from top to bottom, parallel with
the spine. The book may look fine when closed, but the signatures or glued pages
are not all properly held together. |
Split |
The binding is partially cracked, but the signatures or glued pages are still holding. |
Loose or Shaken |
The binding is whole, but some or all signatures are no longer tightly bound together. |
Sticker Ghost |
Residue, discoloration, or other plain evidence that a label has been removed. |
Sticker Peel |
Label or price tag removal damage with surface color or paper loss. |
Bookplate |
Label affixed inside a book identifying the book's owner, often decorative. |
Inscriptions |
Written name, address, date, and/or message, usually on the FEP. Often
considered an attribute if written by a famous or important person. |
Writing |
Names, inscriptions, notation, marginalia, doodles, or the highlighting or
obliteration of original print, done by hand with any stylus. Often but not
always considered a defect. |
Stamps |
Ink or embossed marks imprinted by a book store or previous owner |
Remainder Marks |
Unsold overstock is often marked by the publisher, usually with an ink stain to the
edge of the text block. |
Tape Repairs |
Tears or paper loss repaired with adhesive tape (-don't do it!) |
Cup Rings |
Visible on the covers of books carelessly used as coasters (don't do that either!) |
Stress lines/ Reading Creases |
On or directly adjacent to the spine, these can be barely
visible, or a severe crease resulting in loss of color, legibility
and integrity. |
Binding errors |
Cover off center, improperly glued causing wrinkles, warp, or buckle. |
Roll / Rolled Spine |
The spine is bent lengthwise and is not at right angles to the covers. This
type of curvature is very common in larger or older used copies; This happens to
hardcovers that are large or have glued bindings as well, but it applies to the binding, not
the spine portion of the casing, and so is less noticeable. I haven't noticed this term
used to describe hardcovers. |
Lamination Lift |
Older and oversize paperbacks often have laminated covers. This tends to
peel over time. It can be a minor flaking or total loss of lamination, most common
along the bottom edges. |
Color Flaking |
This is the loss of small bits of color from the surface of the paper, which is not
significant enough to call chipping. Paper is bare but otherwise apparently
undamaged. |
Corner curl |
One of the corners at the fore-edge does not lie flat. May mildly affect only
the cover, or may include a large part of the text block. Pages may be so curled that
they fold over onto themselves multiple times. This does not usually affect
readability. |
Punched cover |
Actual hole punched in the cover, indicating a discounted book. A practice
often employed by book stores to indicate a non-returnable book. |
Corner clip |
The removal of a triangular corner of the book cover, also indicating a discounted
and / or non-returnable book. |