Call Toll Free (888) 747-2695
Follow BestPrinting On Twitter
Follow us on twitter for the latest news
Facebook BestPrinting
Facebook us for special deals

An Expanded Glossary of Graphic Arts and Printing Industry Terminology Pt. 1

A   B   C   D   E   F   G   H   I   J   K   L   Go to Pt. 2


A/W - an abbreviation for Artwork.

Accordian or Z fold - a method of folding in which each fold opens in the opposite direction to its neighbour, giving a concertina or pleated effect.


Air - an amount of white space in a layout.


Alphabet (length or width) - the measurement of a complete set of lower case alphabet characters in a given type size expressed in points or picas.

Anodized plate - an offset printing plate with a specially treated surface to reduce wear during printing.




Art - in graphic arts usage, all matter other than text material eg illustrations and photographs.


Authors Alterations or Corrections - changes made to the copy by the author after typesetting but not including those made as a result of errors in keying in the copy.

Return to top of page.


Backing up - to print the second side of printed sheet.

Backslant - letters that slant the opposite way from italic characters.

Balloon - a circle or bubble enclosing copy in an illustration. Used in cartoons.

Banner - a large headline or title extending across the full page width.

Base artwork - artwork requiring additional components such as halftones or line drawings to be added before the reproduction stage.

Baseline - the line on which the bases of capital letters sit.

Binding - the various methods used to secure loose leaves or sections in a book; eg saddle-stitch, perfect bound.


Bleed - layout, type or pictures that extend beyond the trim marks on a page. Illustrations that spread to the edge of the paper without margins are referred to as 'bled off'. Please refer to our page devited to fully explaining Bleed.

Blind emboss - a raised impression made without using ink or foil.

Block in - to sketch in the main areas of an image prior to the design.

Blow up - an enlargement, most frequently of a graphic image or photograph.

Blurb - a short description or commentary of a book or author on a book jacket.

Board - paper of more than 200gsm.

Body - the main text of the work but not including headlines.


Bold type - type with a heavier darker appearance. Most typefaces have a bold face.

Bond - a sized finished writing paper of 50gsm or more. Can also be used for printing upon.

Border - a continuous decorative design or rule surrounding the matter on the page.


Broadside - an original term for work printed on one side of a large sheet of paper. Also, a folding style where the piece is folded in half and then folded again in half at a 90 degree angle to the first fold.

Bullet - a large dot preceding text to add emphasis.

Return to top of page.


Calendered finish - produced by passing paper through a series of metal rollers to give a very smooth surface.



Caps - an abbreviation for capital letters.

Caps and Small Caps - a style of type that shows capital letters used in the normal way while the body copy is set in capital letters which are of a slightly smaller size.

Caption - the line or lines of text that refer to information identifying a picture or illustration.


Caret marks - an indication to the printer of an ommission in the copy indicated as ( ) showing the insertion.

Cartridge - a thick general purpose paper used for printing, drawing and wrapping.

Case bound - a hardback book made with stiff outer covers. Cases are usually covered with cloth, vinyl or leather.

Cast coated - art paper with a exceptionally glossy coated finish usually on one side only.

Catchline - a temporary headline for identification on the top of a galley proof.

Century Schoolbook - a popular serif typeface used in magazines and books for text setting which has a large x-height and an open appearance.



Close up - a proof correction mark to reduce the amount of space between characters or words indicated as (').


Collate - to gather separate sections or leaves of a book together in the correct order for binding.



Column rule - a light faced vertical rule used to separate columns of type.

Compose - to set copy into type.

Condensed - a style of typeface in which the characters have an elongated appearance.


Contrast - the degree of tones in a photograph ranging from highlight to shadow.


Corner marks - marks printed on a sheet to indicate the trim or register marks.


Cross head - a heading set in the body of the text used to break it into easily readable sections.

Cursive - used to describe typefaces that resemble written script.

Cut flush - a method of trimming a book after the cover has been attached to the pages.

Cutout - a halftone where the background has been removed to produce a silhouette.

Return to top of page.



Dash - a short horizontal rule used for punctuation. See Em and En dash below.


Die - A cutting, scoring, foil, or embossing die. Also, a hardened steel engraving stamp used to print an inked image. Used in the production of good quality letter headings.




DPI (Dots Per Inch) - the measurement of resolution for page printers, imagesetters, and platesetters. Currently most page printers work at 300-1,200 dpi and imagesetting systems operate at 2,400 dpi and above.



Return to top of page.


Egyptian - a term for a style of type faces having square serifs and almost uniform thickness of strokes.

Em - in printing terms it is a square unit with edges equal in size to the chosen point size. It gets its name from the letter M which originally was as wide as the type size.

Em dash - a dash used in punctuation the length of one em.

Embossing - relief images formed by using a recessed die.

En dash - a dash approximately half the width of an em dash.

En - a unit of measurement that is half as wide as an em.



Expanded type - a typeface with a slightly wider body giving a flatter appearance.

Return to top of page.


Face - an abbreviation for typeface referring to a family in a given style.

Filler - extra material used to complete a column or page, usually of little importance.

Flag - the designed title of a newspaper as it appears at the top of page one. This is sometimes incorrectly refferred to the masthead (which is something completely different).

Flexography - a rotary letterpress process printing from rubber or flexible plates and using fast drying inks. Mainly used for packaging.

Floating accent - an accent mark which is set separately from the main character and is then placed either over or under it.

Flush left - copy aligned along the left margin.

Flush right - copy aligned along the right margin.

Flyer - an inexpensively produced circular used for promotional distribution.


Font (or font) - a complete set of characters in a typeface.


Four color process - printing in full color using four color separation negatives - yellow, magenta, cyan and black.


Full measure - a line set to the entire line length.

Full point - a period or full stop.

Return to top of page.




Gigabyte (GB) - one billion bytes. Usually describes either a quantity of digital data (documents) or of storage (such as memory or a hard drive). Since the early 2000s most consumer hard drive capacities are grouped in certain size classes measured in gigabytes.

Gloss ink - for use in litho and letterpress printing on coated papers where the ink will dry without pentration.

Gothic - typefaces with no serifs and broad even strokes.


Greeking - a software device where areas of grey are used to simulate lines of text. One of desktop publishing's less clever methods of getting round the slowness of high resolution displays on the PC.




Gutter - the central blank area between left and right pages.

Return to top of page.


Hairline rule - the thinnest rule that can be printed, usually defined as a single device pixel. Not recommended for use because its size is impractically small when reproduced on high resloution devices such as platesetters.

Hairlines - the thinnest of the strokes in a typeface.



Hanging punctuation - punctuation that is allowed to fall outside the margins instead of staying within the measure of the text.

Hardback - a case bound book with a separate stiff board cover.

Head - the margin at the top of a page.

Helvetica - a sans serif typeface.


Highlight - the lightest area in a photograph or illustration.


Return to top of page.



Impression cylinder - the cylinder of a printing machine which brings the paper into contact with the with the printing plate or blanket cylinder.


Insert - an instruction to the printer for the inclusion of additional copy.



Italic - type with sloping letters.

Return to top of page.



Return to top of page.



Kerning - the adjustment of spacing between certain letter pairs, A and V for example, to obtain a more pleasing appearance. Not all DTP systems can achieve this.

Keyline - an outline drawn or set on artwork showing the size and position of an illustration or halftone.

Kilobyte (K) - 1024 bytes, a binary 1,000.

Kraft paper - a tough brown paper used for packing.

Return to top of page.


Laid - paper with a watermark pattern showing the wire marks used in the paper making process. Usually used for high quality stationery.

Laminate - a thin transparent plastic coating applied to paper or board to provide protection and give it a glossy finish.

Landscape - work in which the width used is greater than the height. Also used to indicate the orientation of tables or illustrations which are printed 'sideways'. See Portrait.

Laser printer - a high quality image printing system using a laser beam to produce an image on a photosensitive drum. The image is transferred on to paper by a conventional xerographic printing process. Currently, most laser printers set at between 300 dpi to 1,200 dpi depending upon the model and print settings.

Layout - a sketch of a page for printing showing the position of text and illustrations and giving general instructions.

Lead or Leading - Extra space added between lines of type to space out text and provide visual separation of the lines. Measured in points or fractions therof. Twelve point type set on 14 pt. line spacing is said to be leaded +2 points. Named after the strips of lead which used to be inserted between lines of metal type. Modern practical usage has blurred the difference between leading and line spacing.

Legend - the descriptive matter printed below an illustration, mostly referred to as a caption. Also an explanation of signs or symbols used in timetables or maps.


Letterset - a printing process combining offset printing with a letterpress relief printing plate.


Library picture - a picture taken from an existing library and not specially commissioned.

Ligature - letters which are joined together as a single unit of type such as oe and fi. Ligatures have long been supported on the Macintosh platform but is not fully supported on the Windows platform.

Lightface - type having finer strokes than the medium typeface. Not used as frequently as medium.

Line gauge - a metal rule used by printers. Divided into Picas it is 72 picas long (11.952in).

Line Spacing - The measurement between lines of type as measured from baseline to baseline. Measured in points or fractions therof. Twelve point type set on 12 pt. line spacing is said to be set solid. Modern practical usage has blurred the difference between leading and line spacing.

Linen tester - a magnifying glass designed for checking the dot image of a halftone.

Lining figures - numerals that align on the baseline and at the top.



Loose leaf - a method of binding which allows the insertion and removal of pages for continuous updating.

Lower case - the small letters in a font of type.

Return to top of page.

Go to Pt. 2

The preceding text is taken from a glossary of printing and typesetting terms that was compiled by Henry Budgett (henryb@sco.COM). This glossary of terms associated with the typesetting and printing industries was put together as a series of articles in a newsletter called ``Desktop Publisher'' published between 1986 and 1989. Some entries have been updated and edited to reflect changes in technology. The material was gathered from a wide variety of sources and compiled by J K Johnstone who deserves credit for the original effort. The material contained in this glossary is originally the copyright of The Desktop Publishing Company Ltd.