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

Meta tags
Code that, together with the content of the Web page, go to form an HTML document. They describe the content of a page, list the keywords relating to the page, store information on the author and the software used in building the site. The mo

Metal foil
Thin, flexible layer of metal, such as aluminium, sued as face materials. Thinner gauges are often laminated to paper for strength.

Metalising
Applying a thin coating of metal to a non-metallic surface. May be done by chemical deposition or by exposing the surface to vaporized metal in a vacuum chamber.

Metallic Film
A plastic or resinous film that has been coated on one side with a very thin layer of metal.

Metallic ink
Printing inks that produce an effect gold, silver, bronze or metallic colours.

Metamerism
The tendency of colour to change with the light source in which it's viewed. For example, two reds may appear to match under fluorescent light, but clash badly in the light of the sun.

Methylene Chloride
A watery glue used to bond plastics together, or attach plastic-backed findings to badges. Some common brand names are Rezn-Bond and Liquid Bond.

Mezzotint
Random dot-pattern halftone screen or a method of engraving a plate to produce variations in tone.

MG (Machine glazed)
Paper with a high gloss finish on one side only.

Micrograin Carbide
Is a hybrid of conventional carbide that incorporates a smaller particle size. This finer structure results in a material that is considerably stronger and tougher than conventional carbide grades which equates to longer tool life.

Micrometer
A mechanical device for measuring thickness (usually in thousands of an inch).

Micron
A unit of measure. On millionth of a meter or about .00004' (25 microns = 0.001').

Microsurface engraving stock
Flexible engraving plastic having a very thin cap surface that has been hot-stamped to a core material.

Middle tones
Grey areas of a photograph that are lighter than the shadows and darker than the highlights.

MIDI
Musical Instrument Digital Interface; specification standardising interface between computers and musical synthesisers. Multi-channelled, each channel corresponds to an instrument or voice.

Migration
The movement of one or more of the components of a pressure-sensitive adhesive to either a substrate or face material; the movement of one or more of the components of either or both the face material and the substrate into the adhesive and ink.

Mill
The physical site where paper is manufactured; refers to a company that manufactures paper. Champion premium papers, for example, are manufactured at the Hamilton, Ohio mill. Champion is also referred to as a mill.

Mill Broke
Mill Broke paper generated at the paper mill prior to completion of the manufacturing process. Wet mill broke originates at the wet end of the papermaking machine, while dry mill broke comes from the dry end of the papermaking machine.

Mils
Used in describing adhesive coat weights, thickness. The term means thousandths of an inch.

Minimum Application Temperature
The lowest temperature at which an adhesive will function.

Mock-up
The rough visual of a publication or design. See Dummy

Modem (MOdulator-DEModulator)
A device for converting digital data into audio signals and back again. Primarily used for transmitting data between computers over telephone lines.

Modern
Refers to typestyles introduced towards the end of the 19th century. Times Roman is a good example of modern type.

Moire
A pattern created by printing several repetitive designs on top of each other. In four-colour process printing, four screens of coloured dots print on top of each other. If the angles of the halftone screens of each of the four colours are not properly aligned with each other, an undesirable, blurry pattern, called 'moire' appears in the final imag…

Moisture Content
Percent moisture. The moisture present in a material, as determined by specified methods.

Moisture Resistant
That property of a sheet that resists uptake or passage of moisture. Usually achieved by adding sizing.

Moisture vapour transmission
A measure of the rate of water vapour transmission through a P.S. label.

Mold release agents
Materials used in the manufacture of molded objects to facilitate their removal from the mold. Mold release agents can, in some instances, cause serious adhesion problems.

Monochrome
Image made up of varying tones of one colour

Monospace
A font in which all characters occupy the same amount of horizontal width regardless of the character.

Monotype
An obsolete form of machine typesetting, casts one letter at a time.

Montage
A single image formed from the assembling of several images.

Montage
Collage of multiple images.

Mottle
Non-uniform colouring, coating or printing of a face material.

Mottling
Uneven impression, especially in flat areas - caused by too much pressure or unsuitable paper or ink.

Mounting board
A heavy board used for mounting artwork.

Mounting press
Machine that dry mounts photographs and artwork without liquid adhesives.

Mouse
A handheld pointing device using either mechanical motion or special optical techniques to convert the movement of the user's hand into movements of the cursor on the screen - technically known as the GUI, the Graphical User Interface. Generally fitted with one, two or three buttons and used on a mouse pad.

Moving beam bar code reader
A device which searches for a bar code pattern by sweeping a moving optical beam through a field of view.

MPEG
Motion Picture Experts Group; multimedia video playback standard - allows digital video to compressed using JPEG and encoded video sequences. Two MPEG standards exist: MPEG-1 is about equal to a VCRand the one associated with personal computers, while MPEG-2 supports high quality digital video.

MS (Manuscript)
The original written or typewritten work of an author submitted for publication.

Muller
Metal, glass or stone block use in grinding pigments.

Multiple exposure
Photograph with more than one exposure.

Mutton
A typesetting term for the em quod.

Mylar
Dupont's trademark for clear, tough polymeric polyester film.

Natural Coloured
Applied to papers whose colours result from the nature of the stock used when no bleach or colouring has been added. In the case of Kraft, its natural colour is a tan or light brown.

Natural Resins
The products obtained from the exudations of trees and sometimes used as adhesive, coatings or sealer bases. Common natural resins are the copals, damar, shellac accroides, sandarac, rosin and mastic.

Natural Rubber
Derived from the latex of rubber trees. It imparts tack and adhesion properties to pressure-sensitive adhesives.

Navigation
The structure for and the act of moving around a web site.

Negative
A photographic image of originals on paper, film or glass in reverse from that of the original copy. Dark areas appear light and vice versa.

Negative assembly
Assembly of negatives on a flat for plate making.

Negative photographic film
Carries an image in which the values of the original are reversed.

Neoprene rubber
A polymer of chloroprene, it is used as an adhesive base. Commonly used where oil and gasoline resistance is required. Resistance to swelling action of aromatics (pure and fuels) is poor but much better than natural rubber. Also used to coat doctor or metering rolls.

Newsprint
An unsized, low quality, inexpensive and absorbent paper used for printing newspapers.

Nick
The notches in photographic film that designate the emulsion side, when fumbling in the dark.

Nip
Line of contact between two rolls. Often referred to as the pull or draw rolls of a web press.

Nipping
A stage in book binding where after sewing the sheets are pressed to expel air.

Non-Impact Printing
This encompasses various print processes including Thermal (direct and indirect), Ink Jet and Toner.

Non-scratch inks
Inks resistant to abrasion when dry.

Non-woven materials
Usually refers to paper 'tissues' or synthetics such as tynek.

Novelty printing
Printing on items such as pens, clothing, balloons.

Nut
An en quod.

Oblique
A slanted character, the sans serif equivalent to italics.

Oblique stroke
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OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
Software such as Omni Page Pro that provides a means of reading printed characters on documents and converting them into editable text rather than just a picture.

OD
Outside diameter of a cylinder, roller or roll of labels.

OD100 Process
A proprietary term used to describe Champion's bleaching technology that combines oxygen delignification and 100% substitution of chlorine dioxide for elemental chlorine.

OEM
Original Equipment Manufacturer. One who produces a component or components used in the making of a finished assembled product.

Off-machine Coating
Coating paper after it comes off the papermaking machine rather than while it is still on the machine. Off-machine coaters may be used to add a single layer of coating to a paper, or to add a second layer to a paper that has already been machine coated.

Office Reprographic Paper
Commonly referred to as reprographic paper, includes a variety of business paper grades (both cut-size and copier rolls), like bond, mimeo, duplicator, and reproduction papers.

Offprint
A run-on or reprint of an article first published in a magazine or journal.

Offset
An indirect printing process. Ink is transferred to paper from a blanket that carries an impression from the printing plate, rather than directly from the printing plate itself. Generally, when we say 'offset' we mean 'offset lithography,' even though other printing processes, such as letterpress, may also use this indirect technique. The term offs…

Offset gravure
Primarily done on a flexographic press using the offset principle.

Offset lithography
The method of printing whereby ink is offset from the printing plate to a second roller then to paper.

Offset Papers
Book and text weight papers that are made to withstand the rigors of offset printing. These papers are more resistant to water and less susceptible to picking. Most book and text grades of paper can be used on offset presses. Often the term 'offset' is used synonymously with 'book.' The basic size of off- set papers is 25'x38'.

Old style
A 16th Century style of type characterised by stressed strokes and triangular serifs. An example of an old style face is Garamond.

Olefins
A group of unsaturated hydrocarbons of the general formula CnH2n, and named after the corresponding paraffins by the addition of 'ene' or 'ylene' to the stem.

One-up, two-up
Printing one (two, three, and so on) impressions at a time in a single job.

Onionskin
A translucent lightweight paper used for airmail stationery.

Ooze
Adhesive moving out of ends of rolls or stacks of sheets causing ends to feel sticky and possible causing material to block.

Oozing
A “squeezing out� of the adhesive from under the backing, occurring when the tape is in roll form, the edges of the roll become tacky.

Opacity
A measure of how opaque a paper is. The more fibers or fillers a paper has, the more opaque it is, and the less it allows 'show- through' of the printing on the back side or on the next page. Opacity isn't always determined by thickness or weight; a thinner paper may have more opacity than a thicker paper if opacifying thickeners are used.

Opaque
Opaque: Ink which does not allow the substrate beneath to show through.

Opaque Ink
An ink that conceals all colour beneath it.

Operating Side
That side of a label press on which the printing unit adjustments are located. Opposite of driving side or gear side.

OPI (Open Prepress Initiative)
A method of using small low resolution images in the DTP application and having the appropriate high resolution image obtained by the RIP from a server at output time.

OPP
Oriented polypropylene.

Optical centre
A point above the true centre of the page, which will not appear 'low' as the geometric centre does.

Optical Disks
Videodisks on which large amounts of information can be stored in binary form representing characters of text or images. The disks cannot be used to view the information using a modified compact disk player and TV.

Opticite Film
Trademark of a label film supplied by Dow Chemical (polystyrene type).

Orientation
The alignment of bars and spaces to the scanner. Often referred to as vertical (picket fence) or horizontal (ladder).

Orphan
Line of type on its own at the top or bottom of a page.

Orthochromatic film
“Ortho� film sensitive to blue, green and yellow light that records black-and-white images without tonal gradations. Used in plate making.

OS (Operating System)
As DOS on Windows platforms, and MacOS for Apple Macintosh. Provides basic functionality such as keyboard input, and sending output to a monitor, keeping track of files and their whereabouts and controlling peripherals such as printers and additional hard drives. They also provide the ability for the computer to run applications.

Out-of-register
When the colours of a printed image are misaligned.

Outgas
Vaporization of a solid or liquid under heat. Out gassing can occur in some plastics and insufficiently dried plants, resulting in adhesive failure of films applied over them.

Outline
A typeface in which the characters are formed with the outline only defined rather than from solid strokes.

Output device
The final destination for a prepress workflow, usually a laser printer or imagesetter.

Over laminating
Application of clear film to a graphic for the purpose of protection or to enhance the graphic quality.

Over runs
Production beyond the quantity specified.