Glossary - Key Terms

Glossary of Key Terms

At Copy It…Mail It, communication between us and our clients is crucial. So just to make sure that we understand each other fully, here are some key terms that will keep you up to speed with the “printing lingo.”

Accordion fold: Bindery term, two or more parallel folds, which opens like an accordion. Note: does not come with music or lederhosen!

Against the grain: At right angles to direction of paper grain.

Bind: To fasten sheets or signatures with wire, thread, glue, or by other means.

Bindery: The finishing department of a print shop or firm specializing in finishing printed products.

Bleed:No need for a bandage, it's printing that goes to the edge of the sheet after trimming.

Blind embossing: An image pressed into a sheet without ink or foil.

Bond & carbon: Business form with paper and carbon paper.

Bond paper: Strong durable paper grade used for letterheads and business forms.

Brightness: The brilliance or reflectance of paper.

Carbonless: Pressure sensitive writing paper that does not use carbon.

Camera-ready copy: Print ready mechanical art.

CIMI: Pronounced “see mee” - it's the shortened name for Copy It…Mail It.

CMYK: Stands for Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black and is a color model in which all colors are described as a mixture of these four process colors. CMYK is the standard color model used in offset printing for full-color documents. Because such printing uses inks of these four basic colors, it is often called four-color printing.

Coil Binding: A type of side binding where one continuous wire runs down the spine of a document - also known as spiral binding.

Collate: A finishing term for gathering paper in a precise order.

Color separations: The process of preparing artwork, photographs, transparencies, or computer generated art for printing by separating into the four primary printing colors.

Comb bind: To plastic comb bind by inserting the comb into punched holes.

Continuous-tone copy: Illustrations, photographs or computer files that contain gradient tones from black to white or light to dark.

Copy: All furnished material or disc used in the production of a printed product.

Copy It…Mail It: The only copy/mail store to go for fast, affordable and friendly service.

Cover paper: A heavy printing paper used to cover books, make presentation folders, etc.

Crimping: No, girls not for your hair. It's to puncture marks holding business forms together.

Crop: To cut off parts of a picture or image.

Crop marks: Printed lines showing where to trim a printed sheet.

Cyan: One of four standard process colors. The blue color.

Dummy: Let's not go there. This is a rough layout of a printed piece showing position and finished size.

Duotone: A halftone picture made up of two printed colors.

Duplex: Printing on both sides of a page, or double-sided printing.

Emboss: Pressing an image into paper so that it will create a raised relief.

Foil: A metallic or pigmented coating on plastic sheets or rolls used in foil stamping and foil embossing.

Foil emboss: Foil stamping and embossing an image on paper with a die.

Foil stamping: Using a die to place a metallic or pigmented image on paper.

4-color-process: The process of combining four basic colors to create a printed color picture or colors composed from the basic four colors.

Gloss: A shiny look reflecting light.

Grain: The direction in which the paper fiber lie. Warning - this type of grain not suggested as part of a balanced meal.

Hard copy: The output of a computer printer, or typed text sent for typesetting.

Impression: Putting an image on paper.

Imprint:Adding copy to a previously printed page.

JPEG: (“jay-peg”) Short for Joint Photographic Experts Group - a compression technique for color images. Although it can reduce files sizes to about 5% of their normal size, some detail is lost in the compression.

Laminate: To cover with film, to bond or glue one surface to another.

Magenta: Process red, one of the basic colors in process color.

Matte finish: Dull paper or ink finish.

Negative: The image on film that makes the white areas of originals black and black areas white.

Offsetting: Using an intermediate surface used to transfer ink. Also, an unpleasant happening when the images of freshly printed sheets transfer images to each other.

Offset paper: Term for uncoated book paper.

Ok sheet: Final approved color inking sheet before production begins.

Opacity: The amount of show-through on a printed sheet. The more opacity, or thicker the paper, the less show-through. (Note - the thicker/heavier the paper, the higher the cost.)

Overrun: When you run so much, you feel like you're going to pass out! Also known as copies that exceed what you originally planned.

Perfect bind: A type of binding that glues the edge of sheets to a cover like a telephone book, Microsoft software manual, or Country Living Magazine.

PDF: Stands for Portable Document Feeder. A file (text, graphic or combination) saved in a 'read-only' format, so that it cannot be altered. This is an ideal way to send files to printers to ensure margins, graphics, and fonts hold true to the original design.

PMS: The abbreviated name of the Pantone Color Matching System.

Process blue: The blue or cyan color in process printing.

Process colors: Cyan (blue), magenta (process red), yellow (process yellow), black (process black).

Ream: Five hundred sheets of paper.

Reverse: The opposite of what you see. Printing the background of an image. For example; type your name on a piece of paper. The reverse of this would be a black piece of paper with a white name.

Saddle stitch: Binding a booklet or magazine with staples in the seam where it folds.

Scanner: Device used to make color separations, halftones, duo tones and tri tones. Also a device used to scan art, pictures or drawings in desktop publishing.

Score: A crease put on paper to help it fold better.

Self-cover: Using the same paper as the text for the cover.

Side stitch: Binding by stapling along one side of a sheet.

Signature: You know this one - it's what we require on a proof to get your job completed and back to you!

Spine: The binding edge of a book or publication.

Spiral Binding: (see coil binding)

Stamping: Term for foil stamping.

Stock: The material to be printed.

Text paper: Grades of uncoated paper with textured surfaces.

TIFF: Most commonly known as an acronym for Tagged Image File Format, one of the most widely supported file formats for storing bit-mapped images on personal computers.

Under-run: Production of fewer copies than ordered. See over run.

Up: Printing two or three up means printing multiple copies of the same image on the same sheet.

Watermark: A distinctive design created in paper at the time of manufacture that can be easily seen by holding the paper up to a light.