Lexicon Post 10/20/16

Signature

This term refers to a step in the printing process. When creating a booklet, someone will take the pages that need to be printed and form them into a signature, a larger document that has several pages on it, usually about 6 per side, that will be printed out, folded, and cut down to the booklet size. Grouping the pages creates the folded and stapled edge.

 

Hickey Picker

When printing on certain types of paper, bits of fluff and dust from cutting it get into the air and sometimes the printers. This creates little marks on the document called hickeys, so sometimes there is an extra step involved in printing whereby the hickey dust bits are rolled off. These are called hickey pickers. I’m not sure anyone in the class will forget this term.

 

DPI

This stands for dots per inch, and is a way of knowing the level of detail a printer is capable of printing. We saw the dots (in some number of inches) with the magnifying glass on the plate at QSL.

 

Bleed

This refers to when you want to print to the edge of the paper and so you leave a little space there, usually an eighth of an inch or so. This will allow you to print the document and trim it to the exact measurements needed. This term makes me think when ink bleeds, requiring just a bit more space.