Printing Terminology

Bleed: Extending an image beyond the trim marks to eliminate borders or margins in the finished piece

Coil-Bind: To bind by spinning a flexible plastic coil through holes punched along the edges of a stack of paper — also called a spiral bind

Collate: To organize a printed matter in specific order as requested.

Collate v. Non-collate: Collated pages are in proper numerical order in each set while non-collated pages are in separate sets of each page

Color Separation: The physical act of decomposing a color graphic or photo into single-color layers–cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK)–for the purpose of offset press printing. In the case of digital printing, color separation is an internal software driven process. In either case, color separation is performed to provide the impression of infinite colors.

Crop Marks: Lines near the edges of an image indicating portions to be reproduced — also called cut marks or tic marks

DPI: “Dots per Inch” is a measure of resolution for printers, scanners and displays. Laser printers typically reach 1200 DPI but 600 DPI is acceptable

Duplex or Back-to-Back: Printing an image on both sides of a sheet of paper

Head-to-head: Printing the top of the front of the page back-to-back with the top of the page on the back side

Head-to-toe: Printing the top of the front of the page back-to-back with the bottom of the page on the back side

Imposition: Arrangement of multiple pages on large sheets so they will appear in proper sequence after sheets are folded and bound

Margins: The border around the page where the printers can’t print. This area is .25″ on most copiers.

Original: Your typeset hard copy or digital file from which copies are produced

Registration: Putting two or more images together so that they are exactly aligned and producing a sharp image

Signature Booklet: The collated pages of one folded and trimmed form, making up one section of a bound book