Tabloid (newspaper format)

A tabloid is a newspaper with a compact page size smaller than broadsheet. There is no standard size for this newspaper format.

The term tabloid journalism refers to an emphasis on such topics as sensational crime stories, astrology, celebrity gossip and television, and is not a reference to newspapers printed in this format. Some small-format papers with a high standard of journalism refer to themselves as compact newspapers. Larger newspapers, traditionally associated with higher-quality journalism, are called broadsheets, even if the newspaper is now printed on smaller pages. In common usage, tabloid and broadsheet are frequently more descriptive of a newspaper's market position than physical format.

The Berliner format used by many prominent European newspapers is sized between the tabloid and the broadsheet. In a newspaper context, the term Berliner is generally used only to describe size, not to refer to other qualities of the publication.

The word "tabloid" comes from the name given by the London-based pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome & Co. to the compressed tablets they marketed as "Tabloid" pills in the late 1880s. The connotation of tabloid was soon applied to other small compressed items. A 1902 item in London's Westminister Gazette noted, "The proprietor intends to give in tabloid form all the news printed by other journals." Thus "tabloid journalism" in 1901 originally meant a paper that condensed stories into a simplified, easily absorbed format. The term preceded the 1918 reference to smaller sheet newspapers that contained the condensed stories.

A tabloid is defined as "roughly 17 by 11 inches (432 by 279 mm)" and commonly "half the size of a broadsheet".

Tabloid newspapers, especially in the United Kingdom, boast a very high degree of variation as far as target market, political alignment, editorial style, and circulation are concerned. Thus, various terms have been coined to describe the subtypes of this versatile paper format. There are, broadly, two main types of tabloid newspaper: red top and compact. The distinction is largely of editorial style; both red top and compact tabloids span the width of the political spectrum from socialism to capitalist conservatism. Red top tabloids are so named due to their tendency, in British and Commonwealth usage, to have their mastheads printed in red ink; the term compact was coined to avoid the connotation of the word tabloid, which implies a red top tabloid, and has lent its name to tabloid journalism, which is journalism after the fashion of red top reporters.

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