Editing Project Gutenberg (section)

==Scope of collection==
[[File:Project Gutenberg total books.svg|thumb|Growth of Project Gutenberg publications]]

{{As of|2025|05}}, Project Gutenberg claimed over 75,800 items in its collection, with an average of over 50 new [[e-book]]s being added each week.{{Citation needed|date=May 2025}} These are primarily works of [[literature]] from the [[western culture|Western cultural tradition]]. In addition to literature such as novels, poetry, short stories and drama, Project Gutenberg also has [[cookbook]]s, [[reference work]]s and issues of periodicals.<ref>For a listing of the categorized books, see: {{cite web|author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.-->|date=28 April 2007|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Category:Bookshelf|title=Category:Bookshelf|publisher=Project Gutenberg|access-date=18 August 2007|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070711034456/http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Category%3ABookshelf|archive-date=11 July 2007}}</ref> The Project Gutenberg collection also has a few non-text items such as audio files and music-notation files.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.manchesterpl.org/music/project-gutenberg-sheet-music/|title=Project Gutenberg Sheet Music &#124; Manchester-by-the-Sea Public Library|publisher=Manchesterpl.org|access-date=14 July 2014|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714144216/http://www.manchesterpl.org/music/project-gutenberg-sheet-music/|archive-date=14 July 2014}}</ref> Most releases are in English, but there are also significant numbers in many other languages.

Whenever possible, Gutenberg releases are available in [[text file|plain text]], mainly using [[ASCII|US-ASCII]] [[character encoding]] but frequently extended to [[ISO/IEC 8859-1|ISO-8859-1]] (needed to represent accented characters in French and [[ß|Scharfes s]] in German, for example). Besides being copyright-free, the requirement for a [[ISO 8859|Latin]] ([[character set]]) text version of the release had been a criterion of Michael Hart's since the founding of Project Gutenberg, as he believed it was the format most likely to be readable in the extended future.<ref>Various Project Gutenberg FAQs allude to this. See, for example: {{cite web|title=File Formats FAQ|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:File_Formats_FAQ|access-date=2 November 2012|author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.-->|quote=You can view or edit ASCII text using just about every text editor or viewer in the world. [...] Unicode is steadily gaining ground, with at least some support in every major operating system, but we're nowhere near the point where everyone can just open a text based on Unicode and read and edit it.|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121102071414/http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg%3AFile_Formats_FAQ|archive-date=2 November 2012}}</ref> Out of necessity, this criterion has had to be extended further for the sizable collection of texts in East Asian languages such as Chinese and Japanese now in the collection, where [[UTF-8]] is used instead.

Other formats may be released as well when submitted by volunteers. The most common non-ASCII format is [[HTML]], which allows markup and illustrations to be included. Some project members and users have requested more advanced formats, believing them to be easier to read. But some formats that are not easily editable, such as [[Portable Document Format|PDF]], are generally not considered to fit with the goals of Project Gutenberg. Also Project Gutenberg has two options for master formats that can be submitted (from which all other files are generated): customized versions of the [[Text Encoding Initiative]] standard (since 2005)<ref>{{cite web|date=12 April 2005|url=http://pgtei.pglaf.org/marcello/0.3/doc/20000-h.html|title=The Guide to PGTEI|publisher=Project Gutenberg|access-date=7 February 2013|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130518140059/http://pgtei.pglaf.org/marcello/0.3/doc/20000-h.html|archive-date=18 May 2013}}</ref> and [[reStructuredText]] (since 2011).<ref>{{cite book|date=25 November 2010|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/181|title=The Project Gutenberg RST Manual|publisher=Project Gutenberg|access-date=8 February 2013|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130126113034/http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/181|archive-date=26 January 2013}}
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Beginning in 2009, the Project Gutenberg catalog began offering auto-generated alternate file formats, including HTML (when not already provided), [[EPUB]] and [[plucker]].<ref>{{cite web|date=4 April 2010|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Help_on_Bibliographic_Record_Page|title=Help on Bibliographic Record|publisher=Project Gutenberg|access-date=3 September 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110917121302/http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg%3AHelp_on_Bibliographic_Record_Page|archive-date=17 September 2011}}</ref>