Q. I am editing a text in which it is necessary to cite the source of several illustrations from an unpaginated book published in Asia. The author and I agreed that it would be useful to count the leaves and then cite the page number as a folio, for instance, “ff42v–43r.” We disagree on where to begin counting: the title page (English) or the first page with print. This first page might be interpreted as a half title page: It has just the Chinese name of the artist, who is the subject of the book. The verso might be considered a frontispiece: It has a photograph of the artist and a quotation. So which would be folio 1?
A. To leave no doubt as to how to find the page you cite, use the simplest and most obvious numbering: The first recto page is 1; its verso is 2. In your citation, use brackets [42–43] to indicate that the numbers are not expressed in the book itself. If you cite folios instead, Chicago uses the abbreviation fols. (singular fol.), reserving ff. for “and the following pages.” See CMOS 14.48, 14.53, 14.54, and 14.123.