Print on the second side of a sheet already printed on one side.

Backslant:

Letters that slant the opposite way from italic characters.

Banding: (1)

Some draw and illustration programs let you create a vignette or split fountain effect in which the colour or shade of a part of the picture changes gradually from light to dark or from one colour to another. Due to the relatively low resolution of most lower-end printers, a vignette often shows the graduation from dark to light in distinct, contrasting bands rather than in one continuous flow. This effect is called banding. The higher the resolution of the printer, the less banding will be visible.

Banding: (2)

Method of packaging printed pieces of paper using rubber or paper bands.

Base Artwork:

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

Baseline:

The line on which the bases of capital letters sit.

Basis Weight:

In paper, the weight of a standard ream of paper. The basis weight of most packaging papers is calculated on a ream of 500 sheets of 24 inch x 36 inch, or in pounds of 3,000 square feet of paper. See also Ream.

Baud Rate:

A measure of the speed at which a modem sends and received bits of data. Technically baud is not the correct term for transmission speed except in ancient 300-baud modems. You should say BPS (bits per second) instead.

Benday:

See Screen Tint

Bendtsen Smoothness:

Bendtsen Smoothness is established by measuring the amount of air escaping between an annular ring and the material surface. The rougher the surface, the greater the loss of air; thereby producing a higher reading. A smoother print finish with a greater degree of dot sharpness can be achieved on material that has a smooth surface. The lower the figure, the smoother the surface.

Bezier Curve:

A mathematically defined curve that describes a shape. Bezier curves are created in drawing applications like Illustrator and Freehand.

Binary:

A counting system used in computers consisting of only 1's and 0's. It can be defined by two conditions: On or Off.

Binary Coding:

Using the numbers 1 and 0 to represent the characters accessible from a keyboard.

Bind:

To fasten sheets or signatures and attach covers with glue, wire, thread or other means.

Bindery:

A print shop department or separate business that does trimming, folding, binding and other finishing tasks.

Binding:

The various methods used to secure loose leaves or sections in a book; eg saddle-stitch, perfect bound.

Bit:

Contraction of the words Binary Digit. The smallest piece of information that can be handled by a digital computer, represented by the numbers 1 and 0.

Bitmap:

Computer image made up of dots (pixels). Each dot represents one bit. For high-quality publishing, bit map refers primarily to a graphic image as it appears on screen. Bit map graphics, when printed, have a distinctly "computerized" look to them, as they suffer badly from aliasing.

Bitmap Graphic:

An image or shape of any kind -a picture, a text character, a photo that's made up of dots (bits) rather than discrete objects. Typically produced by paint, image-editing and 3-D graphics programs. Sometimes called a raster image; compare with the definition for vector graphic.

Bitmapped Font:

A font in which each character is made up of a pattern (map) of dots. To display it correctly, you must have a separate set of character maps for each size (10-point, 12-point, etc.) otherwise, you'll have a case of the jaggies. Also called a fixed-size or screen font. "City-named" fonts (<"xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><"xml:namespace prefix = st1 />Monaco, Geneva, New York, etc.) are bitmapped fonts that have no corresponding printer font. A city-named font does not print well to a PostScript printer and can stop a RIP device in its tracks.

Black:

One colour in the four colour process used to provide deeper contrast and detail.

Black Lining:

A paper and/or fabric strip.

Black Liquor:

One of the many sources of power used by integrated paper mills is gained from the incineration of black liquor. This liquor is essentially liquefied lignin, which has been removed from the cellulose fibre during the cooking stage.

Blade Line:

Where the doctor blade on a rotogravure press develops an imperfection causing a line or streak in the print on the piece at this imperfection.

Blanket:

The thick rubber mat on a printing press that transfers ink from the plate to paper.

Bleaching:

(TCF) Totally Chlorine Free: The pulp is bleached without the use of chlorine chemicals, ie. No chlorine gas or chlorine dioxide, giving zero AOX level.

(ECF) Elemental Chlorine Free: This pulp is bleached without the use of chlorine gas. However, some chlorine dioxide is used, plus other non chlorine based products such as Oxygen. Pulps using this bleaching method contain up to 0.5kgs AOX per tonne of air dried pulp.

Bleed:

An image that is printed to the edges of a page, or the ability of a press or printer to print an image to the edges of a page. A full bleed document is printed on a larger sheet and is trimmed to size, since ink or toner would foul press cylinders or belts if it actually extended off the edges of the paper. Printers typically charge more for bleeds because more paper is required.

Blends:

Transition from one colour to another or a graduation of one colour to a lighter or darker shade of that same colour.

Blind Embossing:

A relief image embossed without ink or foil.

Blister:

A small raised area, caused by the expansion of trapped gas or other fluid beneath the metal surface. In a lamination, small-localized areas free or freed from adhesion.

Blocking:

Impressing a design or lettering on a book cover. The blocking may be in ink or metal foil, or it may be blind blocked to produce a recessed surface. The undesired adhesion of two or more plies of material to the extent that surfaces become damaged or distorted, or the inks or coatings transfer from one surface to the other when adjacent layers are separated.

Blow Up:

An enlargement, most frequently of a graphic image or a photograph.

Blueline:

A blue photographic proof used to check position of all image elements. Also known as a Blueprint. See also, Dyeline.

Board:

1) Heavy paper, usually over 200 gsm

2) Alternate term for mechanical.

Boards:

The material used to stiffen the covers of a casebound book.

Bond:

Originally a term applied to cotton-content paper used for printing bonds and legal documents, and distinguished by strength, performance, and durability. Used for letterheads and forms, bond paper may now be made from cotton, chemical wood pulp, or a combination of the two. Today, writing, digital, and cut-size papers are often identified with the bond scale.

Bond & Carbon:

Business form with paper and carbon paper.

Bond Strength:

A measure of strength of a bond between two adhesives.

Box Perf:

An area that has been perforated across and down. For example, to form a label.

BPS:

Bits Per Second. The correct way to express the data-transfer speed between computer devices, such as modems. Today's modems generally range from 9600 bps to 56.6 kbps. Compression can increase the effective throughout to higher levels.

Break For Colour:

Also known as a colour break. To separate mechanically or by software the parts to be printed in different colours.

Bridge:

A device that is used to interconnect local area networks so that devices running on separate networks can communicate. A bridge may be internal to a computer.

Bright Finish Foil:

Foil having a uniform bright specular finish.

Brightness:

The brilliance or reflectance of paper.

Brightness (ISO):

Brightness is measured as the percentage of light in a narrow spectral range reflected from the surface of a sheet of paper. It is not necessarily related to colour or whiteness. A paper with a brightness of 98 is an extremely bright sheet with almost all light being reflected back to the viewer. Bright white papers illuminate transparent printing inks, giving cleaner, crisper colour and contrasty blacks.

Bromide:

A photograph of the artwork, or a specific part of the artwork such as a company logo, printed on special bromide paper. See also PMT.

Browser:

An application that provides interface tools to the World Wide Web feature of the Internet. The tools interpret, view and retrieve information from the servers that make up the internet. Netscape and Internet Explorer are widely used browser applications.

Bubble Jet:

Ink Technology Developed by Canon.

Bulk:

The thickness of a book or sheet of paper in relation to its weight. Can be expressed as grams per square meter (GSM) or in terms of thousandths of an inch or number of pages per inch.

Bulk Pack:

Boxing printed product without wrapping or banding.

Bullet:

A large dot preceding text to add emphasis.

Burn light:

 Exposing a printing plate to high intensity light or placing an image on a printing plate by

Burst Binding:

A method of unsown adhesive binding in which the sections are 'burst' by being punched through the spine to allow the adhesive to link the paper in each section, and the sections to each other.

Butt:

To join without overlapping or space between.

Butt Fit:

Printed colours that overlap only a hairline so they appear to butt.

Byte:

Eight bits. A byte typically represents one character (letter, number or other symbol) on the screen.