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Print Technology Warehouse - Printing glossary Category: Agriculture and Industry > Printing Date & country: 15/12/2007, UK Words: 1575

AA
Authors Alterations, changes other than corrections, made by a client after the proofing process has begun. AAs are usually charged to a client as billable time.

Abrasion Resistance
The degree to which a label surface - including printing and protective coatings - is able to resist rubbing or wearing away by friction.

Abrasiveness
The tendency of a paper, coating or ink to abrade or wear away die edges, slitting blades, printing type, etc., by friction.

Absorbency
The capacity a paper has for accepting liquids, like the inks or water used to run offset lithographic presses.

Accelerated Ageing
Test procedures for subjecting P.S. label stock to special environmental conditions in order to predict the course of natural aging in a far shorter period of time.

Accordion fold
Two or more parallel folds made in opposite directions, which open like an accordion - also called Concertina fold.

Acetate
A plastic synthesized from cellulose dissolved in acetic acid which exhibits rigidity, dimensional stability and ink receptivity. Transparent or matte films, sometimes used for label stocks.

Achromatic
Colour correction system used in conjunction with a colour scanner that removes a degree of extraneous colour.

Acid-free paper
Paper manufactured on a paper machine with the wet-end chemistry controlled to a neutral or slightly alkaline pH.

Acrobat
A commercial program from Adobe for creating and editing PDF files.

Acrobat Reader
A free program from Adobe, used for displaying and printing PDF files. Creating and editing PDFs requires commercial programs such as Acrobat Distiller and Acrobat Exchange.

Acrylic Adhesive
Pressure-sensitive adhesive based on high-strength, acrylic polymers. Can be coated as a solvent or emulsion system.

Acrylic Emulsion
A water-based latex make with acrylic polymers, used in coatings and adhesives.

Actual weight
The true weight of any volume of paper. The actual weight of paper is used to determine both purchase price and shipping costs. See also basic size, basis weight, weight.

Adaptive dithering
See stochastic screening.

Addendum
Supplementary material that is additional to the main body of a book, printed separately at the start or end of the text or posted on the web.

Additive colours
The primary colours of light - red, green and blue (the RGB “colour space�) that may be mixed to form all other colours in photographic reproduction and in computer monitors.

Additives
Ingredients of paper other than pulp. Additives include clay fillers, dyes, sizing, and other chemicals.

Adhesion
A measurement of the force required to remove a label from a substrate. Several test methods normally characterize this force at various time intervals after application to various substrates.

Adhesive
A substance capable of holding materials together by surface attachment.

Adhesive Failure
A partial or total lifting of the label from the substrate.

Adhesive Permanent
A PS adhesive characterized by having relatively high ultimate adhesion. The label either cannot be removed intact or requires a great deal of force to be removed.

Adhesive Removable
A PS adhesive characterized by low ultimate adhesion. The label can be removed from most substrates without damaging the surface or leaving a residue surface or leaving a residue or stain.

Adhesive Residue
Adhesive Residue: (Adhesive Deposit, Adhesive Transfer): The adhesive remaining behind on a substrate when a P.S. label is removed.

Adhesive Splitting
Condition where part of the adhesive remains on the face stock and part on the substrate when the label is put under stress or removed.

Adhesive Strike-through
When adhesive penetrates through the face material of a pressure-sensitive lamination.

Adhesive, Cold Temperature
An adhesive that will enable a PS label to adhere when applied to refrigerated frozen substrates, generally + 35 degrees F or colder.

Adhesive, High Temperature
An adhesive that will enable a PS label to withstand sustained elevated temperature (+200 degrees F or higher).

Adhesive, Pressure Sensitive
A type of adhesive, which in a dry form is aggressively tacky at room temperature. It has the capability of promoting a bond to dissimilar surfaces on contact, with pressure.

Against the grain
Folding or feeding paper at right angles to the direction of the paper fibers.

Air
An amount of white space in a layout.

Airbrush
A mechanical painting tool producing an adjustable spray of paint driven by compressed air. Used in illustration design and photographic retouching.

Align
To line up typeset or other graphic material as specified, using a base or vertical line as the reference point. Page layout programmes like Quark Xpress use x and y co-ordinates to achieve accuracy to three decimal pts of a mm.

Alignment
The relative position of a scanner or light source to a bar code.

Alkaline Papermaking
The manufacture of paper under alkaline conditions using additives, caustic fillers like calcium. Alkaline paper is usually used where aging resistance is desired. It's the logical choice for documents, books, and maps. All of Champion uncoated premium papers are made with an alkaline process, so they're long lasting and well suited for permanent r…

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.

Alt tag
The text description of a graphic on a web page in case of graphics being turned off in the browser.

Alum
Also called hydrated aluminium sulphate or papermaker's alum. A papermaking chemical that's typically used when adding rosin size to pulp, alum imparts water-resistant properties to paper. In practical terms, it keeps paper from clinging to the presses.

Aluminium
A soft, silver coloured metal commonly used as an engraving material for printing plates. Anodised aluminium has been electroplated with an aluminium oxide coating, which gives it a hard, durable surface.

Ambient Temperature
Normal fluctuating temperatures in an environment which are not closely controlled, e.g. in a typical warehouse, boxcar, office building, etc.

Ampersand
The '&' character - meaning, quite literally 'and' - it is the stylisation of the Latin 'et' for 'and'.

Anchor Coat (Barrier Coat)
A coating applied to the face material on the side opposite the printed surface to provide increased opacity to the face material and/or to prevent migration between adhesive and the face material and/or to improve anchorage of adhesive to a face material.

Aniline dye
Generic term for the cheap volatile synthetic dyes made from dye dissolved in Methylated spirit and used in flexographic printing inks.

Anodised plate
An offset printing plate with a specially treated surface to reduce wear during printing.

Anti-alias
Blending text and image edges into background colour to eliminate the stair-step effect - aliasing - prevalent in bitmaps.

Antiquarian
Largest size of hand made paper - 53 x 31 in.

Anvil
A hardened steel roll upon which the bearers of a rotary die cutter ride which also provides the hardened surface to support the die cutting.

Apex
Point of a character where two lines meet at the top, eg. the point on the letter A.

API
Application Programming Interface; language/message format used by an application program to communicate with either an operating system, or control program.

Appendix
Material subordinate to the text of the work, printed and bound immediately after it. Planned from the beginning of a job.

Application Temperature
Temperature of a substrate or label material at the time the label will be applied. All Fasson adhesives have a minimum application temperature rating. Testing is recommended when approaching minimum application temperature.

Applicator
A device that automatically feeds and applies pressure sensitive labels to a product.

Apron (US term)
Additional white space allowed in the margins of text and illustrations when forming a foldout.

Aqueous Coating
A water-based coating applied after printing, either while the paper is still on press ('in line'), or after it's off press. An aque- ous coating usually gives a gloss, dull, or matte finish, and helps prevent the underlying ink from rubbing off. Unlike a UV coat- ing or a varnish, an aqueous coating will accept ink-jet printing, making it a natura…

Archival Paper
Paper that's alkaline and won't deteriorate over time. Archival papers must meet national standards for permanence: they must be acid-free and alkaline with a pH of 7.5 to 8.5; include 2% calcium carbonate as an alkaline reserve; and not contain any ground wood or unbleached wook fiber. The expected life of archival paper is more than 100 years.

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

Art Director
The individual responsible for overseeing the creative and production process and managing other creative individuals.

Art paper
A smooth coated paper made by adding a coating of china clay compound on one or both sides of the paper.

Ascender
Any part of a lower case letter above the x-height, e.g. the part of a letter extending above the main body.

ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Exchange. The standard format for representing text in 8-bit parcels.

Aspect Ratio
The ratio of height to width of a bar code symbol. A code twice as high as wide would have an aspect ratio of 2; a code twice as wide as high would have an aspect ratio of 1/2 or 0.5.

Assembly
Collection and arrangement of the art or film negatives necessary for plate making.

Asynchronous Transfer Mode
Technology permitting sharing of transmission facilities between different data types i.e. video, voice or data.

Attachment
An image, movie file or document that is attached to and sent with an email.

Authentication
Method of ensuring that the person accessing a computer system is who they claim to be.

Author's 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.

Auto-complete
A feature of 4th and 5th generation browsers that completes a URL as it is being typed in.

Auto-leading
A default setting in page layout software to determine the horizontal space between baselines, usually 120%.

Autoclave
Container for sterilizing, i.e. in label application, label must endure a cooking process by superheated steam under pressure.

Back etching
In lithography, reducing the negative's density.

Back margin
The margin of a page that is closest to the spine.

Back Split
See split back.

Back step (collation) marks
Black marks printed on a signature that show where the final fold will be.

Backed
A sheet of paper that has the second side printed.

Backing
Refers to the carrier sheet of material in a pressure sensitive lamination as opposed to the face material. Usually has a release coating applied so that the adhesive will not stick too tightly to it. Release liner, backing paper, carrier, etc.

Backing up (1)
Paper that's alkaline and won't deteriorate over time. Archival papers must meet national standards for permanence: they must be acid-free and alkaline with a pH of 7.5 to 8.5; include 2% calcium carbonate as an alkaline reserve; and not contain any ground wood or unbleached wook fiber. The expected life of archival paper is more than 100 years.

Backing up (2)
To print the second side of printed sheet.

Backslant
A typeface that slants backward, opposite of italic.

Bad break
inappropriate, unattractive or illegible word hyphenation at the end of a line of type.

Bagginess
A slack, floppy area usually caused by gauge variation. The material has been stretched and is actually longer in that area.

Bakelite
A rigid plastic used as an engraving material or as a matrix material for making rubber stamps. It is commonly called phenolic or melamine.

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

Bandwidth
Amount of data that can be transmitted over a network or circuit measured in bits per second.

Bank
Lightweight writing paper.

Banner
Large headline or title that extends for the full width of a page in print and a full width advertisement on a web page that always remains in view. 'Hot-linked' to advertisers site.

Bar
The dark element of a printed symbol.

Bar code
An array of rectangular bars and spaces which are arranged in a predetermined pattern following unambiguous rules in a specific way to represent elements of data which are referred to as characters.

Bar code density
The number of data characters which can be represented in a linear unit of measure. Bar code density is often expressed in characters per inch.

Bar code reader
A device used to identify and read bar code symbols.

Bar length
The bar dimension perpendicular to bar width.

Bar width
The thickness of a bar measured from the edge closest to the symbol start character to the trailing edge of the same bar.

Bar width reduction
Reduction of the nominal bar width dimension on film masters or printing plates to compensate for printing gain.

Barrier coat
A coating applied to the face material on the side opposite the printed surface to provide increased opacity to the face material and/or to prevent migration between adhesive and the face material and/or to improve anchorage of adhesive to face material.

Base
The major constituent, other than pigments and filler, comprising the non-volatile portion of an adhesive coating or sealer compound.

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

Base Roll
See anvil.

Baseline
The imaginary line upon which the bases of some letters sit.

Basic Sheet Size
The customary sheet size used to establish the basis weight of a ream (500 sheets) of a given grade of paper. Standard basic sizes vary by paper grade. For example, the basic size of book paper is 25'x38', while the basic size of cover stock is 20'x26'.

Basis Weight
The weight, in pounds, of a ream (500 sheets) of paper cut to a given standard (basic size). Each major paper grade, like cover, bond, or offset, has its own basic sheet size, which determines its basis weight. For example, the basic size of book paper is 25'x38' for 500 sheets; therefore, 500 sheets of 70lb. offset book paper in 25'x38' will actua…

Bastard
Any non-standard paper size.