Printing Related Terms

Bleed
The area of an image outside the crop marks cropped off to allow the resulting image to print to the edge of the page.

Crop mark
The mark indicating the position in which the sheet is to be trimmed
Screen ruling

The Em
A measurement consisting of 12 points or 4.5mm

Justification
Type aligned on both sides of the text, achieve by the spacing of letters and words.

Kerning
The fine tuning of spacing between letters.

Leading
The spacing between lines of text.

Point
A printing measurement. 72 points to an inch.

Point size
The Size of type measured from the baseline of type on one line to the baseline of the text on the next.

Range left/right
Body copy aligned to the left or the right with the opposite side ragged.

Registration marks
The marks applied to each film to ensure correct alignment of each colour on press.

Sans Serif
A Typeface without serifs

Spreading
The process to illiminate small areas of white appearing around light coloured text when it reverses out of a dark background. The lighter text is grown slightly (spread) to create a lock-on to allow for the slight movement that occurs when printing.

Trapping/Choking
The process to illiminate small areas of white appearing around dark coloured text when reverses out of a light background. The light background is run slightly underneath (trapped/choked) to create a lock-on allow for the slight movement that occurs when printing.

Widow
A single word on the last line of a paragraph.

X height
The depth of the type not taking into account the assender or decender.