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I am occasionally reminded that the terms that I use regularly as a designer and print buyer, while familiar to me, are not always familiar to you, my client. I feel it an important responsibility as your marketing partner to educate you about them as this knowledge helps you to understand why I am recommending a certain method, or layout to achieve the end results of the creative brief and stay within the project budget.

“Work-and-turn? Work-and-tumble?” What is this, a circus?  Come jump on board the lingo train if you want to know what’s what. Here are some printing terms that seem to come from another world:

Bleeds - when printing extends all the way to the edge of the paper, as in “the ink bleeds off the sheet.” A job that bleeds can cost you more because the printer must print an oversized sheet and trim it to the final size. The bleed region prevents unsightly white lines along the edges of your piece..

Choke - to reduce a printing image slightly so you don’t have a darker overlapped border on a lighter background.

Creep - also called “push out,” it happens when the middle pages of a folded signature extend a little bit beyond the outside pages. Your printer has to compensate for it during layout and imposition. Otherwise you’ll be stuck with a little creep. And who needs that?

Dummy - a preliminary mock-up of the final piece, showing images and text. Sometimes it’s just blank pages of paper, made up in advance to simulate the final size and format of a print project.

Hickeys - these are small spots or imperfections that occasionally show up in printing, due to dirt on the press. Hickeys are bad news no matter where they show up.

Kiss Cut - a diecut that just barely cuts through the paper. This is commonly used for labels to cut the custom label but leave the backer uncut.

Moiré -  an undesirable pattern caused by incorrect screen angles for printed colors that might make you think your vision’s in trouble.

Scum - a film of ink printing in the non-image areas of a plate where it shouldn’t print.

Verso is the left-hand and Recto is the right-hand page of a book or magazine. 

Web Printing - Web presses are massive presses used to print jobs from rolls (or webs) of paper, as opposed to paper precut into sheets.

Oh, and what about work-and-turn and work-and-tumble? Each of these terms refer to methods of reducing printing costs by using a single set of plates to print both sides of a piece.

I have only scratched the surface here with these definitions. For definitions from “A” to “Z”, check out the glossary of printing terms at PaperSpecs.com. This site is a great resource when it comes to paper and printing on paper.