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Why does the book class use openright by default? Is it more beautiful than openany? Any other historical or technical reason?

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    Left-to-right writing direction, plus right-handedness, the front page is the one on the right (recto = 'right, correct'): page 1 is on the right (all odd page numbers are on the right). It is proper to start with the face. With modern DTP, chapters can start on the left (verso = 'back') because the user doesn't know. But starting by having to look at the back of the folio (folium = 'leaf') always feels unusual, and somewhat annoying (and a little bit impolite to do it that way). With one-sided or scrolling, the flow of text is continuous and there is no recto and verso anymore.
    – Cicada
    Commented Nov 20, 2019 at 4:27
  • Just to add: Wikipedia reports a conjecture by Martyn Lyons (2011) Books A Living History p 21 that it started with writing on the front of papyrus, with the grain instead of against the grain: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recto_and_verso
    – Cicada
    Commented Nov 20, 2019 at 4:38
  • Forget for a moment electronic texts, and imagine you open a real book in english. If you search for some chapter leafing through the half-open book, you will see only the odd pages, but it will take only a few seconds to find it. But with a book done with openany you will miss the page with this method, and you will need re-scan slowly the book completely open, page per page to find the damn chapter. That is why have sense put the chapter only in odd pages, even when this mean leave some blank pages.
    – Fran
    Commented Nov 20, 2019 at 8:22

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Generally speaking the Western tradition is for chapters to start on recto (odd numbered) pages.

Adrian Wilson (no relation) in The Design of Books says that in the USA chapters may begin on either the recto or verso (even numbered) page while in books with many short chapters they may be "run-in" (two chapter heads on the same page).

Mitchell and Wightman's Book Typography : A Designer's Manual effectively say that chapters should start on rectos but only in the case of illustrated books may they start on versos, and it is not acceptable to leave a blank recto.

I have also briefly discussed the topic in Section 4.2.1 of my A Few Notes on Book Design (> texdoc memdesign).

In all cases the first chapter must start on a recto page.

If the publisher is desperate to reduce the number of pages (and hence cost) they might demand that the openany option be used, but that is a commercial judgement not an aesthetic one.

My best advice is to use openright (the default option) unless advised/pressured to use something else.

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  • Let me accept this answer, but thank you all for the nice comments. I checked several physics text books written in English, but a part of them use "openany" like design and the other the "openright" style. So I thought "openright" was not the publishing standard.
    – Akira Okumura
    Commented Nov 23, 2019 at 5:52
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TeX only adopted the standard of printed books in the west, which is to have a new chapter on an odd page.

I'm not a historian specialized on the history of books. But my guess is that the first page of text looks much better on an odd side, because the print of the even side shows less through the paper than if printed on the back (even) side, when you open the book. The reason for less translucency is that the following pages of the book stack prevent any light coming through the paper, of course.

So it is a commercial argument: a book looks prettier to the buyer with the (first) chapter opening on the right hand page and prettier books are selling better.

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I agree with @KeksDose that TeX has adopted the traditional book format for Western languages -- the ones in which writing goes from left-to-right. They will also have the spine on the left and the page edges to the right, when the front of the book is facing up. Look at a book written in Hebrew or Arabic; when the front of the book is facing up, the spine will be on the right, the page edges will be on the left, and chapters will traditionally start on left-hand pages -- with the odd page numbers on the left and even numbers on the right.

When books were produced by scribes, it would not be unusual for more than one scribe to work on separate chapters, since that is a logical point of division. Thus, when both sides of a page were filled, the first page of a chapter (in a Western language) would be on the right.

The earliest printing was a emulation of scribal work.

So, tradition.

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  • Thank you reminding me of scribes and scribal traditions.
    – Peter Wilson
    Commented Nov 25, 2019 at 18:45

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