Nameplate (publishing)

The Rensselaer Polytechnic student newspaper nameplate.

In publishing, a nameplate is the title of a newspaper or other periodical in the type style and treatment in which it appears on the front page or cover of the periodical.^[1] This is usually equivalent to the logotype of the periodical.

The term "nameplate" in this context probably comes from the use of etched lithographic plates to produce images in the letterpress printing method used by all newspapers until the second half of the twentieth century. Such a plate containing the logotype of the periodical and used in each issue as the name or title of the publication would therefore be referred to as its "name plate".

In the United Kingdom and several other Commonwealth countries, the term masthead is usually used to refer to the nameplate of a newspaper. Technically, however, a periodical's nameplate is distinct from its masthead, which is the box or section within its pages which contains detailed identifying information regarding its publisher, staff, location, frequency of publication, and contact details.

References

1. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/ref/college/students/coll-student-guide-frontpage.html

External links

• http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/masthead_newspaper.html