Cape Town Book Fair
Glossary of Publishing Terms

Design Terms

Alley
The space between columns within a page. Not to be confused with the gutter, which is the combination of the inside margins of two facing pages.

Baseline
In typography, the imaginary horizontal line upon which the main body of the letters sits. Rounded letters actually dip slightly below the baseline to give optical balance.

Bleed
An element that extends to the edge of the page. To print a bleed, the publication is printed on oversized paper which is trimmed.

Body type
Roman -- normal, plain, or book -- type used for long passages of text, such a stories in a newsletter, magazine, or chapters in a book. Generally sized from 9 point to 14 point.

Camera-ready copy
Final publication material that is ready to be made into a negative for a printing plate. May be a computer file or actual print and images on a board.

Continuous tone
Artwork that contains gradations of gray, as opposed to black-and-white line art. Photographs and some drawings, like charcoal or watercolor, require treatment as continuous-tone art.

Cropping
For artwork, cutting out the extraneous parts of an image, usually a photograph.

Duotone
a halftone image printed with two colors, one dark and the other light. The same photograph is halftoned twice, using the same screen at two different angles; combining the two improves the detail and contrast.

Em space
A space as wide as the point size of the types. This measurement is relative; in 12-point type an em space is 12 points wide, but in 24-point type an em space is 24 points wide.

En space
A space half as wide as the type is high (half an em space.

Facing pages
In a double-sided document, the two pages that appear as a spread when the publication is opened.

Image area
The area on a page within which copy is positioned; determined by the margins.

Kern
To squeeze together characters, for a better fit of strokes and white space. In display type, characters almost need to be kerned because the white space between characters at large sizes is more noticeable.

Leader
A line of dots or dashes to lead the eye across the page to separated copy.

Logotype
A symbol, mark, or identifying name.

Majuscule
A capital letter.

Miniscule
A lowercase letter.

Masthead
The credit box, headed by the publication name, that lists sponsors, editors, writers, designers, illustrators, photographers, and others, along with the publication office address, subscription and advertising information, etc.

Orphan
In a page layout, the first line of a paragraph separated from the rest of the paragraph by a column or page break. Headings without enough type under them may be considered as orphans; there should be as much type below the heading as the height of the heading itself, including white space.

PMS (Pantone Matching System)
A standard color-matching system used by printers and graphic designers for inks, papers, and other materials. A PMS color is a standard color defined by percentage mixtures of different primary inks.

Pull quote
A brief phrase (not necessarily an actual quotation) from the body text, enlarged and set off from the text with rules, a box, and/or a screen. It is from a part of the text set previously, and is set in the middle of a paragraph, to add emphasis and interest.

Punctuation Block
In right-justified or right-aligned text, several consecutive lines that end with punctuation and make the right margin look uneven.

Rivers:
Spaces between words that create irregular lines of white space in body type, particularly occurs when the lines of type have been set with excessive word spacing.