Book and Quill

A book and quill is an item used to write written books.

Writing
By pressing or long pressing screen anywhere while holding a book and quill in their hand, the player can open a text editor GUI.

Using this GUI, the player can write a single book up to 100 or 50 pages long, with up to 798 characters per page, with line breaks counting as two characters. The player can write up to 79,800 or 12,800 characters inside the entire book. No page may be longer than 14 lines and each line can have a width of 57 pixels (see pixel width of each character here).

The player has the ability to copy and paste into books. However, the paste does not work if the text being pasted is longer than a single page. Most Unicode characters are available in books, and they may be pasted in without issue.

In singleplayer, the world pauses while a book is being edited.

Lecterns
One can place a book and quill or a written book on an empty lectern.

The lectern then emits a redstone signal depending on the displayed page in the book. On the last page, the lectern emits a signal strength of 15. This is why lecterns are listed in the "redstone" tab in the creative inventory.

Formatting codes
Text in a book can be styled using codes starting with the  character (section sign).
 * + creates randomly changing characters.
 * + creates bold text.
 * + creates strikethrough text.
 * + creates underlined text.
 * + creates italic text.
 * + –  (hexadecimal) creates colored text.
 * + resets any of the previous styles so text after it appears normally.

If the player uses multiple codes, and continue typing past the end of a line, the next line exhibits only the last formatting code used.

Signing
Books can be signed by pressing the "Sign" button while in the interface. $$, when signed, a book bears the name of the player who wrote it and a title chosen upon signing. $$, the book doesn't display the name of the player as the author; instead, the author can be any text the player wants. After it has been signed, it cannot be edited again – it has turned into a written book.

Special characters can be used in the title, if typed from a keyboard that supports them. Alt codes do not work, and the character cannot be typed even using a keyboard that implements it, meaning titles cannot be colored or formatted in-game. However, on Linux using the compose key to produce special characters does work.

The title of the book can be up to 16 characters long, and the player cannot paste into a title. A "workaround" for the 16-character limitation is to manually rename the book at an anvil, which always costs 1 experience level. This can be done with either a written book or a book and quill – both versions will always display the changed name. If a custom name is removed from a written book, it will revert back to the title it was given during the signing process.

Trading
Expert-level librarian villagers buy a book and quill for one emerald.

Expert-level librarian villagers have a 50% chance to buy 2 book and quills for one emerald.

ID




Item data



 * : The tag tag.


 * See Bedrock Edition level format/Item format.
 * See Bedrock Edition level format/Item format.

Trivia

 * The in-game restrictions on books are not hard limits. Third party editors or commands can make books have more than 100 pages (2,147,483,639 pages), more than 256 characters per page (32,767 characters per page), can change author names, and can have colored titles, among other things. These books still function properly in vanilla Minecraft, meaning the player may encounter such books on adventure maps or multiplayer servers.
 * If the player renames a book and quill in an anvil before signing it, it retains the name from the anvil instead of taking the name from signing.
 * If the player renames a book and quill in an anvil before writing in it, they cannot write anything in the book. If something is written in it before it is renamed, then it functions normally.