Where to put Bible tabs
so they don’t hide each other

The paper guide in the packet tells you where on the page a tab goes. It does not tell you which tabs to put on at all, and that is the decision that actually matters — because sixty-six tabs down the edge of a book that is an inch and a half thick is why they end up overlapping, hiding each other, and peeling at the corners by Easter.

First decision: which books get a tab

Not all of them. A tab is a bookmark you cannot lose, and you do not need a bookmark for a page the book falls open to on its own. Nobody has ever failed to find Genesis, Psalms, Matthew or Revelation. The books you actually lose are the ones in the middle of a run of books that all look alike: the histories between Kings and Job, the twelve Minor Prophets, and the short epistles between Ephesians and Hebrews where Philemon is a single page and Titus is three.

So the honest rule is: tab the books you cannot find in ten seconds. For most people that is twenty to thirty of the sixty-six, and a set of twenty-five tabs on a page edge has room to breathe. The full staircase of sixty-six looks complete in the product photograph, and it is the version that overlaps in real life — on a standard-size Bible the step between tabs works out to an eighth of an inch, which is thinner than the tab.

A tab you never use is not organisation. It is a sticker.

If you do want the full set, split it into two runs rather than one: Old Testament down the page edge starting from the top, then start the New Testament again from the top in a different colour. The two runs sit side by side and every tab shows its full label. Most sets are already coloured that way, which is the reason.

Second decision: where on the page

On the first page of the book, not the last page of the book before it, which is the mistake that puts “Isaiah” on the final page of the Song of Solomon and has you opening one leaf too early for the rest of your life.

Line the tab up with the top of the printed text, not the top corner of the page. Anything that sticks up above the block of text takes the full force of the cover every time the book closes, and it creases. Anything at the very bottom edge takes the wear from the shelf and the bag. The safe zone is the height of the text block, which is where the guide sheet in the packet is trying to put you.

Fold the tab over the edge so it grips both sides of the leaf. A tab stuck to one side only is holding on to 30-gram paper with half its adhesive, and the first time it catches on a sleeve it takes the corner of the page with it. Press it down with a fingernail, once, and then leave it alone — repositioning a tab on Bible paper lifts the fibre, and the second placement never holds like the first.

Third decision: when

After you have marked for a month, not before. Tabs are permanent on paper this thin — the adhesive comes off with the surface of the page — so they belong on a Bible you have already decided is your working copy. If you are still in the first month, still in pencil, still deciding whether to write in it at all, tabs are a commitment you have not made yet. Wait.

And do not tab a Bible you might one day have rebound. A binder trims the page edges to square them up, and every tab has to come off first, which on this paper means they do not come off cleanly.

The blank tabs are the best ones in the packet

Most sets throw in a handful of blank tabs, and most people never use them. They are the most useful tabs in the set, because they mark places rather than books: the psalm you go back to when it is bad, the chapter you are working through this month, the passage you read at a funeral and will read at the next one. A book tab gets you to Habakkuk. A blank tab gets you to the four pages you actually open when the house is quiet.

There is one product recommended below and the link to it is a paid, sponsored link — I earn a commission if you buy through it, at no extra cost to you. I have not applied this particular set to my own Bible; everything above about placement is true of any tab, and the details below are from the manufacturer’s own listing.

What to buy, if you are buying

The things that separate a good set from a poor one are boring: laminated rather than plain paper, because unlaminated tabs go grey at the edge in a year; a matte finish, because gloss glares under a reading lamp; and an alignment guide in the packet so the staircase is straight. Everything else is the pattern printed on them, which is a taste question.

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Who should not buy tabs

If flipping does not frustrate you, skip them; they are organisational, not spiritual, and the supplies page puts them third for a reason. Skip them on a Bible with a thumb index cut into the page edge, which is doing the same job already. And think twice on a Bible with gilt edges — the tabs cover the gilding, and on a good leather Bible that is the part you paid for.

Seek ye out of the book of the LORD, and read: no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate. Isaiah 34:16