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I am getting slightly confused with the pdf output of the book document class.

I am writing the textbook for my Discrete Math course and I chose to use the book class with the default options.

I understand that this has the following effects:

  • the right pages are odd numbered, the left pages are even numbered,
  • chapters start only at odd numbered pages.

This is in fact what I get, but while I would expect a bigger left margin for odd numbered pages and a bigger right margin for even numbered pages to compensate for the binding, I seem to get just the opposite.

What is going on?

Could just be an effect due to the pdf viewer running on my Mac? I usually produce outputs in the a4paper format option.

Martin Schröder
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Andrea Mori
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    the margins are for your thumbs not for binding. standard typographic practice makes the outer margins about twice as wide as the inner ones so a 2-page spread has three similar white bands, (binding methods may need additional lost paper but that is another matter) – David Carlisle Sep 13 '18 at 23:02
  • @DavidCarlisle : but I'm planning to use a service of print-on-demand and they need a pdf ready for prnt. What am I supposed to do, then? – Andrea Mori Sep 13 '18 at 23:07
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    the geometry package allows you to specify whatever margins (and binding offset) you want. Or classes such as koma or memoir have their own ways for specifying the same. I was just explaining why the defaults are as they are. (for which we have a duplicate question/answer somewhere:-) – David Carlisle Sep 13 '18 at 23:09
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    whether you need additional binding space depends a lot on the binding methods to be used presumably a print service will have some advice about that. – David Carlisle Sep 13 '18 at 23:11
  • Even when you do not use the memoir class, I highly recommend the companion document A Few Notes on Book Design. I learned much from it about the terminology as well as the best practices to produce a well-structured textbook. – Jeffrey J Weimer Sep 14 '18 at 01:14
  • The book class is outdated, people use memoir or KOMA-script for larger works. – Keks Dose Sep 14 '18 at 07:26
  • KOMA's scrbook does have an option for binding corrections (BCOR). But those corrections aren't enormously big usually. – Skillmon Sep 14 '18 at 08:05
  • @Skillmon memoir also provides for binding corrections via its \setbinding{<length>} macro. – Peter Wilson Sep 14 '18 at 18:08
  • Think of the open spread as two columns with the left, center and right white space the same. – Herb Schulz Sep 15 '18 at 21:31
  • For some more discussion on the reason for this, see https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/42063/illogical-twoside-margins – Torbjørn T. Sep 23 '18 at 09:29

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