They thumb through pages to make sure the ink density is proper, that the color is in registration, the margins are set, pagination perfect, date accurate.

Mr. Wong, who initially studied engineering in college and described himself as “kind of a techie,” helped install new pagination systems early in his journalism career.

Duncan gives a surprisingly vivid explanation of how the two foundations of the contemporary index — alphabetical order and pagination — themselves had to be invented.

It’s been a nightmare, the pagination: one comma in the first of those columns would throw off 200 pages.

And then they witnessed pagination, when computers could create entire pages on a screen.