Page Orientation

Page orientation is the way in which a rectangular page is oriented for normal viewing. The two most common types of orientation are portrait and landscape. The specific word definition comes from the fact that a close-up portrait of a person's face and upper body is more fitting for a canvas or photo where the height of the display area is greater than the width, and is more common for the pages of books. Landscape originally described artistic outdoor scenes where a wide view area is needed, but the upper part of the painting would be mostly sky and so is omitted.

Page orientation is also used to describe the dimensions of a video display. The most common video display orientation is landscape mode, especially the 4:3 ratio, which is 4 units wide and 3 units tall, and the more recent 16:9 widescreen landscape display mode.

Portrait screen orientation can also be selected for computers, but was uncommon until the introduction of Apple's iPad, and the most popular use is in mobile devices. However, portrait is preferred for editing page-layout work, in order to view the entire page on the screen at once without wasted space along the sides, and for script-writing, legal work (in drafting contracts etc.), and other applications where it is useful to see a maximum number of lines of text. It is also common in public information displays.