Terminology Flashcards
Baseline Edit
The simplest form of editing performed by a copy-editor; a lighter edit which involves basic checking for and correction of spelling, punctuation, grammar and similar issues, but also the raising of queries – it is essentially a first-run proofread but with more commentary.
Bastard Title
The first printed page of some books, which occurs before the main title page and contains only the title of the book itself.
Closed Up
This is punctuation with no space on either side, as in this way of writing the time: ‘3-4 pm’; as you can see, in this case, there is no space allowed between the numbers and the dash.
Dagger
A typographic symbol usually used in the place of an asterisk to indicate the presence of a footnote, if the latter has already been used; this symbol can also appear in the form of a ‘double dagger’ for a second footnote. Generally, set out as a superscript above the line of the printed sentence.
Em Dash
This is the very long dash you sometimes see in a text, which is often twice as long as an ‘en dash’. They are always used closed up, usually in the place of commas or brackets (aka parentheses) – for example: “it was—all in all—a great party” – or to indicate speech that has been interrupted, as in the case of “What the—”, he gasped. Em dashes are stylistic quirks which aren’t always used in commercial publishing.
En Dash
This is the medium-length dash, as used here, just before this first phrase of its definition; it is often used ‘closed up’ to indicate a range between figures, as in ‘2–3.30 pm’ or in place of a colon, semi-colon, parentheses or commas.
Fixed Space
This is a space used to keep two words or groups of letters or digits together that would otherwise be separated by a character space; for example, the case of that used between numbers and units in ‘100 ml’ so that neither gets separated by a line break.
Furniture
In printing, these are the pieces of metal or wood which separate the blocks of type; on a layout (perhaps in InDesign), furniture refers to the in-built graphic lines and placement indicators such as folios and rules, to which type and images must be arranged.
Hyphen
This is the most familiar and shortest dash used in a text and can be used to form compound words (for example ‘long-form’ or ‘pick-me-up’; this is known as a ‘hard hyphen’. It can also indicate the separation of parts of a word at the end of a line of text, in which case it is called a ‘soft hyphen’. It must never be used in place of punctuation like en-dashes and m-dashes.
Kerning
The lateral distance between the letters in lines of type.
Leading
The vertical distance between the two baselines of lines of type.
Ligature
This describes the situation where two or more letters are joined to form a single character, such as ‘æ’ or ‘ff’. It isn’t used very often these days.
Orphan
This is the situation when the first line of a new paragraph is isolated at the foot of a page and should ideally be moved to the following page (or the following column in a magazine or newspaper) to become part of the rest of the paragraph to which it belongs; this is often done by adjusting the leading.
Overmatter/Overset
A printed matter which has been typeset but for which there is not enough space on the page.
Run-on
A continuation in the text where two lines or paragraphs are consecutively connected that were separated before; for instance, in the case where a sentence had been split unintentionally by a hard return.
Stet
From the Latin for ‘let it stand’, this is usually written in the margin on the same line as a few dots or subscript dashes underneath a correction the proofreader has made in error. It means that you should leave the text as it is and not make the corrections originally indicated. When working on-screen, you can simply delete a correction if it is wrong, though the term can still be used on the print-offs which you are well-advised to use at some point during the proofreading process.
Take Back/Take Over
This describes the process of correcting a bad word break such as ‘toxifi- cation’ at the end of a line and the beginning of the next, where you should either ‘take back’ the last part to make the word complete in the first line or ‘take over’ the first part of the word and move it to the next line.
Transpose
The swapping of words or letters around that are in the wrong order. For example, in the common typo of the word ‘and’, which is often mistakenly typed ‘adn’, you need to transpose the letters ‘n’ and ‘d’ to make it read correctly.
Widow
The opposite of orphan (for which, see above), this describes a short last line of a paragraph (or even just one word) which has edged over to the top of the next page or column; such as word or phrase should be ‘taken back’ to the paragraph it belongs to, on the previous page or column, perhaps by adjusting the leading or kerning.
