blacklash
Lost motion when equipment reverses travel direction input signals produce no change in output position

blackletter
Class of typefaces that are very ornate and complex. They are sometimes refered to as Old English, Text, or Gothic. It is the style of text used by scribes throughout Latin Christendom during the Middle Ages. In Germany they were used until World War II.

Blackletter typefaces can be difficult to read which is why they are only used for stuff like invitations, announcements, diplomas, certificates, or initial caps at the beginning of chapters.

blanket
a rubber surface cylinder on offset presses that receives and transfers the inked image from plate to paper

bleed
- extending an image beyond the finished trim size so that the image runs right to the end of the printed sheet after trimming and binding
- image areas of a sheet or page. When trimmed, the image “bleeds” off the page or sheet

blend
Smooth transition from one colour to another or from one tint to another.

blind
An impression of an uninked image

blind debossing
A strong letterpress impression of an uninked image on the front surface of a sheet of paper. The image is recessed.

blind embossing
A design which is stamped without metallic leaf or ink, giving a bas-relief effect.

blind image
An image that has lost its ink receptivity and fails to print.
block
In computers, a group of characters, digits or words that can be handled as a unit

blow-up
An enlarged image

blue
- Describes the colour of a clear sky
- A primary color of light
- A portion of the color spectrum aligned between green and violet
- In printing, a secondary color resulting in over printing dots of cyan and magenta process color inks.

blue line
A monochrome proof that is generated from film and used to check the layout and positioning of pages on a signature. The blue color was originally chosen to prevent reproduction or use for something besides a proof.

BM
Abbreviation for Back Matter: special pages at the end of a book including the appendixes or the index.

BMP
Abbreviation for BitMaP - A Windows graphics format, not really suitable for prepress use.

BNC
Abbreviation for British National Connector - A connector used for coaxial cabling, like older types of EtherNet networks.

body type
Generally 6 to 14 point size type is used for regular reading matter, depending on the readability of the typeface

BOL
Abbreviation for Beginning Of Line

boldface
- A heavier weight version of typeface, generally used for emphasis, indicated as “BF”
- A type style that is heavier, thicker and blacker than the regular typeface, generally used for emphasis. Bold can be in italic format as well as roman.

bond
Paper of a higher quality finish often used for business correspondence.

Botticelli
Florentine painter (1445-1510) who has nothing to do with prepress but whose painting of The Birth of Venus (1482-84) is used by Adobe as artwork for their Illustrator drawing program. Corel later copied this idea when they used a picture of Hedy Lamarr for Corel Draw.

bounding box
In a page description language, such as Postscript, the defined rectangular area within an image is contained

bow
An image distortion caused by misalignment of the scanner head scanning axis with respect to the cylindrical drum axis

Pages: 1 2 3 4