Question 1

What's the story behind page numbering in books?

Accepted Answer

Page numbering became widespread in European printed books during the late 15th century, shortly after Gutenberg introduced movable type around 1440. Early manuscripts had no page numbers at all — readers navigated by chapter headings or catchwords. Aldus Manutius, the Venetian printer who also invented italic type and the modern semicolon, was among the first to use Arabic numerals for pagination in the 1490s, establishing a convention that has persisted for over five centuries.

Question 2

What page number formats are available?

Accepted Answer

You can choose from five formats: plain numbers (1, 2, 3), "Page N" labels, "N of Total" counters, "Page N of Total" labels, or lowercase Roman numerals (i, ii, iii). You can also set a custom starting number and skip the first page for documents with a title page.

Question 3

Can I place numbers in different positions on the page?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Six positions are available: top-left, top-center, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-center, and bottom-right. A margin slider lets you fine-tune how far from the edge the numbers appear, from 20 to 100 points.

Question 4

Does this work with scanned or image-based PDFs?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The tool adds text directly to the PDF page layer regardless of whether the pages contain searchable text, scanned images, or vector graphics. The page numbers are drawn on top of whatever content already exists.

Add Page Numbers to PDF

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