Fax cover sheets

Fax cover sheets are a good place to see what an office thought was important: page count, sender, recipient, telephone number, and a message box that was nearly always too small.

Generic fax transmission cover sheet with large message box

F-12 general cover
8.5 x 11 in. Black ink on 20 lb bond. The page-count box is wide enough for two digits but not for "including cover."

Plain fax cover sheet showing sender and recipient fields

F-12 pale copy
Same form after a light photocopy. Thin rules around the message box start to break at the corners.

Fax cover sheet with subject and pages fields

F-12 pad proof
Proof sheet with crop marks trimmed off. The shop note specified no logo, which saved one plate change.

Notes

Many cover sheets were designed for handwriting but filled by typewriter or dot-matrix printer. The label spacing gives that away. If the "TO" line is tall and the "DATE" box is narrow, it was probably meant to be written quickly at a fax machine.

Fax generation loss usually attacks small caps first. A clean original may have readable labels, while the third faxed copy reduces "PAGES" and "DATE" to little gray fences.