Book and Quill

Books and Quills are items used to turn books into written books, which players may read.

Writing
Using this item, the player can write a single book up to 50 pages long, with up to 256 characters per page (Note that line breaks, such as those created by pressing, are counted as two characters). No page may be longer than 13 lines and each line can have up to 19 characters. In Singleplayer, the world will pause while a book is being edited. The player has the ability to copy and paste into books. However, the paste will fail if the text being pasted is longer than a single page.

Note that you cannot yet move the cursor while writing into a book, so it's currently impossible to go back and fix a typo without deleting what you've written after it. Selecting text is also unavailable.

When signed, a book will have the name of the player who wrote it, or "Player" if signed while playing offline. The title of the book can be up to 16 characters long, and the player cannot paste into a title. Special characters can be used in the title, if typed from a keyboard which has them. Alt codes do not work, and the § character cannot be typed even using a keyboard which has it implemented, meaning titles cannot be colored or formatted. A written and signed book will have the swirling pink/purple effect like enchanted items.

Special codes (coloring)
Text in a book can be styled using codes starting with the character (section sign), which may be copied and pasted into the book. In Windows, you can type it in a text editor by holding Alt and pressing 0167 or holding alt and pressing 21 on your numpad. It can also be typed using +  +  on the US International keyboard,  +  on the Canadian Multilingual Standard keyboard, + on Mac, or varying other shortcuts depending on locale and operating system.


 * + creates randomly changing characters.
 * + creates bold text.
 * + creates text with a strikethrough.
 * + creates underlined text.
 * + creates italic text.
 * + –  (hexadecimal) creates colored text. See Formatting Codes.
 * + resets any of the previous styles so text after it appears normally.

To use multiple formatting codes, the color code must be used first: it will cancel out all preceding codes. If you use multiple codes, and continue typing past the end of a line, the next line will exhibit only the last formatting code used.

Most Unicode characters are available in books, and although alt-codes do not work, they may be pasted in without issue. One notable use of Unicode is fullwidth and small caps characters: in Minecraft, these appear as a different font altogether, which can be useful for titles or chapter headings. Converters exist which can take normal text and output fullwidth text, which can serve as a large convenience for those wishing to use it. Note that the font used in books is packaged with Minecraft itself, meaning a user's installed fonts do not affect which Unicode characters can be used or how they appear.

Bugs



 * There is a glitch with formatting codes that makes it possible to get lines of text to overlap each other. It occurs when you type a word which can technically fit in the current line, but the game first tries putting it on a new line. Ordinarily, hitting would make it go back to the previous line, and you can continue typing on the new line. However, if it is two characters longer, then it will still go to the previous line, but the cursor goes two lines down. The next time you hit, you will begin typing at the start of the last line with text on it, causing an entire line of overlap. You can try this with the phrase "§lThis is an odd bug ".
 * A Book and Quill glitch involves the Book and Quill GUI not showing up and the word "missingtex" being displayed as large, zoomed-in text on a blank sheet of the book as shown here. This may be due to having an older version of Java.  Upgrading to version 1.6.0_26 (WRT a MacBook pro, Mac OS X, v 10.5.8) may resolve this issue.
 * If you type random letters like until the point where the line stops, there will be a § character on the end of the line and a number on the second row that shifts from 0 to 7.
 * The player cannot input more than one consecutive line break, and cannot begin a line with spaces. This functionality was previously available when the Book and Quill was originally released. To have consecutive line breaks or lines beginning with spaces (indentation), a player must now insert formatting codes (such as §r) at the start of the line.
 * If the player uses colored text in one word then resets the text style, when the last written word moves one line down it will be colored with that previously canceled color. This can be corrected by resetting the text style on the next line, or using §0 to specify black text.
 * Turning on all the text styles (bold, italics, underline, strike through and randomly changing characters) while typing random letters will sometimes cause the text to run off the page.
 * An empty Book and Quill that has been renamed cannot be written in.

Trivia

 * In order to make the § symbol on Windows, hold down and press  on your number pad (far right side). On Mac OS X, press Option+6. On Linux, with the Compose key enabled, press Compose key+o+s.  Note, however, that you cannot do this in-game, so you must copy the character and paste it into the game. On azerty keyboards, one can just press  and.
 * Even if your keyboard has a § key, you will need to copy and paste it.
 * Various in-game restrictions on books are not hard limits. Third party editors can make books have more than 50 pages, more than 256 characters per page, change author names, and have colored titles, among other things. These books will then function properly in vanilla Minecraft, meaning you may encounter such books on adventure maps or multiplayer servers.
 * Other keyboards may also use instead of  and 21.
 * The Book and Quill is a slightly redder color than the normal book.