1. Paper terminology for a sheet four times the size of the traditional broadside sheet e.g. 'Quad Demy', 890 x 1130mm.
2. Letterpress spacing material used to fill out lines of type.
Quality
1. The whole set of features of a product or service which relate to its being able to satisfy the needs of end-user.
2. In paper, the brand or type of paper.
Quality assurance
Abbreviated QA. Umbrella term for all activities associated with the creation and maintenance of a quality system within a company.
Quality control
Abbreviated QC. System for checking quality of products during or after manufacture.
Quality system
Comprehensive, company-wide set of practices adopted in a firm to monitor the quality of its products and the effectiveness of its internal and external operations.
Quirewise binding
Saddle stitching.
Ragged
Text layout that is not justified. Most text on screen is ragged right, i.e. the left-hand margin is aligned while the right-hand margin is not. Ragged left and ragged centre (ragged on both margins) are also used in books, but only usually as a design feature.
Raster image processor (RIP)
Either a program or a piece of hardware that converts a file in a page description language, usually PostScript and possibly containing vector graphics, to a raster or bitmap image for output on a page printer or imagesetter or on a screen.
Ream
Five hundred sheets of paper.
Ream-wrapped
Sheets wrapped in lots of 500.
Recto
A right-hand page.
Proof of a page before printing.
Pantone
Proprietary name of a widely used colour-matching system.
Pantone Matching System (PMS)
See Pantone.
Paper surface efficiency (PSE)
Printability of paper.
Paperboard
Lightweight board in the range 200gsm - 300gsm.
Papeterie
Smooth, stiff paper used in greeting card manufacture.
Paste-up
Dummy or artwork comprising all the elements pasted into position.
Perfect binding
Adhesive binding widely used on paperbacks. Glue is applied to the roughened back edges of sections to hold them to the cover and each other. Also called adhesive binding, cut-back binding, thermoplastic binding, threadless binding.
Perforating
Punching a series of holes in paper, either as coding process or to facilitate tearing off a part.
Perforator
Keyboard which produces punched paper tape.
Permanent inks
Inks which do not fade.
Phloroglucinol
Chemical used on paper to test for woodfree or mechanical furnish. Phloroglucinol is applied to a paper: if the stain remains yellow it is woodfree; if the stain turns red it contains mechanical pulp. The depth of colour of the red stain indicates the percentage of mechanical fibre present.
Photoengraving
Letterpress printing plate.
Pigment
The constituent of a printing ink that gives it its colour.
Pitch
The horizontal spacing of printer characters. Common pitches are 10, 12, and 15 (10, 12 or 15 characters to the linear inch).
The press cylinder which carries the plate.
Platesetter
Imaging unit on a computer-to-plate device which exposes the plate either by laser or by thermal imaging techniques.
Plotter
Device which draws graphics from computer instructions using either laser techniques or mechanical techniques. See imagesetter.
Positive
An image on film or paper in which the dark and light values are the same as the original as distinct from negative.
Postscript
Adobe Systems' proprietary page description language. Achieved prominence through its adoptation by Apple, and currently the most widely used.
Prekissing
Paper and blanket making contact too early, resulting in a double impression.
Prepress costs
All the costs associated with bringing a job ready for press up to but not including printing the first copy.
Press costs
The costs associated with printing and manufacturing a job from plates onwards. As distinct from prepress costs.
1. A photograph
2. A common operating system command to print a specified file list.
Print drum
A rotating drum containing print-able characters. See drum printer.
Printer's devil
Apprentice in a printing shop.
Printing sequence
The order in which the four process colours are applied.
Printmaking
Making fine art reproductions of originals.
Process colour(s)
The four colours Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black (CMYK) used in printing and the colour separation process.
Proofreading
The checking of typeset proofs for accuracy.
Pulp
The raw suspension of woodfibre, treated either chemically or mechanically, in water. Chemical pulp contains many fewer impurities than mechanical pulp.