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Technical Terms

Ampersand The character &.

Artwork
Illustrative material (drawings, charts, photographs, etc.) intended for reproduction.

Bleed

A photograph or illustration that runs off the edge of a page is said to bleed.

Blueprint A photographic proof prepared from text and art copy intended for offset reproduction; the final proof in the offset process. Also called a silverprint.

Body type

See Type.

Boldface
Type that is heavier than the text type with which it is used. See Type.

Bullet
A heavy dot used as an ornament before a paragraph or before items in list form.

Camera-ready Copy

Copy or artwork that needs no further alteration and is prepared to be photographed for a negative or printing plate.

Caps

Capital letters.

Caption
Explanatory matter run above, below, or beside an illustration. Used interchangeably with cutline or sometimes legend.

Cold type
Strike-on, or typewriter composition, or any other typesetting that doesn't use hot metal. (Increasingly, type is being set digitally.)

Composition
Setting a manuscript in type.

Cropping


Eliminating portions of an illustration, such as a photograph. Crop marks are placed in the margins to indicate where an illustration is to be cropped.

Cutline See Caption.

Display type

See Type.

Dummy
Mock-up of a publication suggesting the final appearance and size of the completed project.

Elite type

Typewriter type that runs 12 characters to the inch.

Em


The square of the point size of any type. A piece of type having the same width and height. In early fonts the letter M was usually cast on a square body; hence the name.

En

Half the width of an em of the same font.

Flat

In offset printing, a large sheet of paper with the negatives or positives taped into position and ready for platemaking.

Flush

The term flush designates the absence of indentation. The term flush right indicates that the type aligns at the right.

Folio
A term usually used to mean the page number.

Font


A complete assortment of a given face and size of type, including capital, small capital, and lowercase letters, together with figures, punctuation marks, ligatures, and commonly used symbols and accents.

Galley proof

A rough proof or copy of typeset material before it is assembled into pages. An impression of metal type as it stands in a long, shallow tray known as a galley. With cold type, the galley proof is the first proof, usually a photocopy.

Glossy
Short for glossy print; a photograph with a hard, shiny finish, used for certain kinds of reproduction work. Glossy prints are still sometimes used for submitting photographs and ad layouts to be published in newspapers.

Halftone

Artwork, such as a photograph, reproduced through a screen that allows various densities of dots to give tonal value.

Italic

Slanting type (in contrast to roman, which is upright). Used mainly for emphasis or display, rarely for body or text. See Type.

Justify
To space out lines of type to a specified measure so one or both margins are flush (even).

Keyline

To align type, artwork, headlines, etc., on pasteup sheets or boards for offset reproduction. Also, the final pasteup or camera-ready copy. Now most keylining is done electronically.

Layout
A designer's conception of a finished job, including spacing and type specifications.

Leading
Spacing between lines of type, expressed in points. (Pronounced ledding.)

Legend
Descriptive matter used as part of or with an illustration. The key to the symbols on a map or chart.

Letterpress printing


Printing from raised surfaces, such as type, photoengravings, printing. and wood or linoleum cuts. Paper is pressed against the inked surface to receive the impression. This is no longer commonly used for printing projects. It is now considered an art form.

Ligature
Type characters consisting of two or more letters united as one character (æ for example).

Line copy

Material for reproduction that has no gradations in tone—only solid blacks and whites—such as type or pen and ink drawings.

Lowercase

Uncapitalized letters (abbreviation: lc).

M Abbreviation for a quantity of 1,000.

Multilith
A small printing press or duplicator that operates on the offset principle. It is often used for small-run printing jobs.

Negative
Used in preparing an offset printing plate. See Photo-offset.

Offset
Smudging caused by the transfer of ink from one printed sheet to another. Also called setoff.

Offset printing

A method of printing in which ink is transferred from a printing plate to an intermediate rubber-blanketed cylinder, which in turn offsets the ink onto the paper.

Page proof

An impression of metal type after it has been made into page form. With cold type, the page proof is a copy of the camera-ready page.

Perfect binding
Binding method in which individual pages are held together with an adhesive along the spine of the book.

Photocomposition

A typesetting process in which light is projected through an alphabet disk, drum, or film strip onto photosensitized paper.

Photo-offset

An offset printing process in which a negative print of the copy is used in the photochemical preparation of the metal printing plate.

Photostat

Trademark for a device used to make quick positive or negative photocopies of graphic material. Also a copy made by this method.

Pica
A printer's unit of measurement. It is 1/6 inch, which is equal to 12 points.

Pica type

Typewriter type that runs 10 characters to the inch.

Pick up

To reuse previously printed matter as part of a new work, printing either from the original type or by photo-offset (abbreviation: P.U.).

Plate

A prepared surface from which printing is done.

Point
A unit measure for typefaces. It is 1/12 pica or 1/72 inch.

Process color Reproducing full-color photographs or art by using several printing plates (usually four), each for printing a different color. Inks used in process printing are cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.

Proof

See Galley proof, Page proof, Repro proof.

Quad A space equal to 1 em unless otherwise designated.

Ragged right
Type set with the righthand margin unjustified. See Justify.

Ream

Five hundred sheets of paper of one size and texture.

Repro proof
A high-quality typeset page proof that is used as camera-ready copy in offset lithography. Also called reproduction proof.

Reverse out

When an image of type or of a drawing appears in the color of the stock surrounded by a solid block of color or black, the copy is said to be reversed out.

Roman
The ordinary type style, as distinguished from italic or boldface. See Type.

Running head

A title (usually the title of the publication or of a section within it) repeated at the top or bottom of each page.

Saddle stitching Binding method in which staples (or stitches) are inserted through the middle fold of the sheets.

Sans serif
Type without lines projecting from the top or bottom of the main strokes of a letter. See Type.

Screen print

A photographic print in which the image has been broken into coarse dots so the item can be photographed as line art.

Serif

A short, light line projecting from the top or bottom of a main stroke of a letter. Originally a beginning or finishing flourish made with a pen. See Type.

Signature A group of pages printed on one sheet of paper so they will fold into proper sequence. Signatures are in multiples of four pages (4, 8, 12, 16, 20, etc.).

Silverprint

See Blueprint.

Small caps
Capital letters that are smaller than the regular caps of a font (abbreviation: sc).

Spine
The portion of the binding that connects the front and back covers. Also called backbone.

Stock
Paper to be used for printing.

Strike-on
composition

Typesetting in which the image is transferred directly
from the machine onto paper. Typewriters, IBM Composers, and VariTypers are examples of strike-on equipment.

Stripping
Placing negatives (or positives) in position on a flat before platemaking. Electronic stripping places all the pages and page elements in the correct position on the digital layout.

Transfer letters

Cut-out or rub-off letters printed on clear acetate sheets and used for hand setting of type (usually headlines) for offset printing. Also called press type.

Type






















The type usually used in books and other kinds of ordinary reading matter is commonly called roman. It may be a serif or sans serif typeface; words or phrases may be set off in italic (slanting) type; emphasized elements may be set in boldface (heavier, darker) type. Many faces are available in extended (wide) and condensed (narrow) versions. (Strictly speaking, the term roman is used for numbers and letters whose capital forms are modeled on ancient Roman inscriptions. Thus roman also means a style of type characterized by upright letters having serifs and vertical lines thicker than horizontal lines.)

Body type is a general name for type used for reading or text matter as distinguished from display type, which is used for advertisements, chapter and section headings, etc. Size may be the only difference between body type and display type.

Gothic type is plain, usually with lines of uniform thickness and without serifs. It is sometimes known as block letter.

Script types are imitations of handwriting.

Text is an imitation of the hand lettering that prevailed before movable types were invented. Sometimes called Old English.


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