Glossary of Typesetting Terms

This glossary combines a dictionary and a style guide. It should be useful to anyone who works in publishing or printing for its definitions of typographical terms and concise treatment of typographical style. More than 900 entries provide meanings for both traditional terms and new phrases.

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This glossary combines a dictionary and style guide. Prepared by a team of professionals - a designer, editor, compositors and production managers - this glossary should be of interest to anyone who works in publishing or printing for its definitions of typographical terms and concise treatment of typographical style. The glossary adds details to discussions of typography that are covered more generally in editorial style guides such as "The Chicago Manual of Style". It should be useful for anyone who prepares texts for a living, including those who implement their own typesetting decisions with the aid of word-processing and page-layout software. This manual provides a common technical vocabulary for specialists and non-specialists alike. More than 900 entries provide meanings for traditional terms such as "kerning", "bleed" and "thumbnail", and provide definitions of new phrases, such as "global search and replace", "H & J" (hyphenation and justification) and "idiot file", that have been developed to describe the role of computer technology in typesetting. Eight appendices offer additional guidance.
The house-style sheets of G & S typesetters provide a sample checklist of items that affect the way words are composed into professional quality type. Other appendices cover families of type, the parts of a book, the parts of a letter, coding and marking a manuscript in the precise language of typesetters, writing specifications for tables, proofreaders' marks and special characters.