Magazine and Book Structure: Key Elements
Magazine Structure
A magazine is a periodical (weekly, biweekly, or monthly) with fixed sections and unique or different textual content, expressed through articles. A magazine has a structure divided into:
External Structure
- Logo: The name or icon that distinguishes the product, company, or publication.
- Motto: The statement that distinguishes and identifies the publication, product, or company. It is located under the logo.
- Date: Indicates the day, month, year, and place of publication.
- Summary: It’s mentioned on the cover of one or more articles of general interest, also called an index for short.
- Cover: The face of the publication, usually printed in bright colors. It contains texts and photographs to capture attention, as well as the logo, slogan, date, and summary.
- Format: The reference is in centimeters across the printed page.
Internal Structure
- Index: A list or enumeration of the articles and the pages where they appear.
- Directory: A list of people and the roles they play in the development of the magazine (editor, art director, editorial board, distribution manager, etc.).
- Presentation: Should be appealing and attractive, using color, suggestive photographs, and advertising according to the receiver. Titles should capture attention. The format of the release must be practical and easy to carry.
- Information: The exhibition of events, at first instance, and subsequent news and analysis after prior research, are exposed again in the form of articles.
Hemerographic Sheet
Considered a variant of bibliographic sources, hemerographic sheets are used for magazines and newspapers. Their size is 7.5 x 12.5 cm. Their function is to record the sources. These sheets can be developed for external sources of newspapers and magazines. There are two types:
Hemerographic General
To accomplish it, the following is used:
- Name and theme of the publication highlights.
- Name of the principal publication schedule (“daily, weekly”).
- Place of publication.
Example: Journal of Yucatan. Newspaper of Peninsular Life, Carlos R. Mendez Navarrete, daily, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico.
Hemerographic Including
Data are given for a specific document quoted in a newspaper or magazine:
- Full name of the author of the collaboration.
- Title of the submission “in quotes”.
- The nexus.
- Name and slogan.
- Date and place of publication (placed in parentheses), referring to the day, month, and year.
- Name of the section and number of pages in the case of a newspaper. If the reference is a magazine, just put the page.
Example: LONDON, Gabriel, “The Art of Deception” in Diario de Yucatan. The Period of Peninsular Life (Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, 1 March 2001), National, International, p.4.
Book Structure
A book is a printed, non-periodic publication that consists of a minimum of 49 pages, not counting the cover, excluding publications for advertising, and whose most important part is the text. Books appeared in the Middle Ages when the libraries of the great monasteries replaced strips of parchment paper. Books, scrolls, and codices were the only means of transmission of civilization for more than 15 centuries. Books are classified as:
- Object: When you buy a book just as decoration.
- Practical or functional: When you buy it to suit your immediate needs, such as a dictionary.
- Literary: When you use it as entertainment, such as a book of poems.
External Structure of the Book
- External front: The cover that protects the book. It contains the title, author, and publisher.
- Lapels: Prolongation of the cover, bending inward, or as appendices to the cover.
- Guards: Two blank sheets at the beginning and end that serve as protection.
- Internal cover or title page: Repeats the front (title, author, publisher) and can add others (translator, collection, name of the author of the preface). On the back are entered the data (edition number, copyright, imprint, which is the mention of the publisher, place, and date).