Papermaking Glossary Flashcards

Codex

The form of book as we are used to it in modern times. Has a cover with a title and pages.

Printer

The person who operated the printing press, or who caused the book to come to print by supplying money for the venture.

Folio

A fold that makes 2 leaves, 4 pages.

Quarto

A fold that makes 4 leaves, 8 pages.

Print by forme

When the first side of the sheet is being printed while the second side is being set.

What # indicates when writing a typeset

A space

Leading (pronounced like led)

inserting stories of metal between lines of type in order to increase the space between them

Chase

The iron frame that keeps the type in place

Direction lines

Text at the bottom of the page that identifies where a page goes, through signature marks or catch-words

Furniture, wedges and quoins

Wooden sticks used to fill set gaps

Tympan

The part of the press that holds the paper

Frisket

What holds the paper onto the tympan, and also closes the tympan and makes sure it can’t press where its not allowed

Distributing type

The act of returning type by unlocking the chase and putting them back into the appropriate box

Skeleton forme

The structural foundation of a type that remains when the other types/parts are stripped away

Perfected Sheet

When both sides of the sheet are completed.

Chain lines

A sort of line that helps with format locating.

Cheeks

The pillars of the press that helps the press withstand torque.

Ink Balls

The object used to transfer ink onto the type

Collating

The act of carefully searching for difference between copies of text

Errata Lists

Lists of errors to indicate to the reader that the print has errors, usually at the preliminaries or the end of the book.

Errata Slips

Errata lists that are sometimes slipped into the book, not binded.

Cancels

replacing the error by inserting or pasting corrections. Sometimes sown on if its on a leaf.

Cancel slip

Replacing certain paragraphs or words by inserting or pasting a correction.

Woodcuts

Making your own “type” out of wood, usually to make an illustration.

Relief Printing

A type of type-making where the white spaces are carved away. An example of this is woodcutting.

Intaglio Printing

The opposite of relief printing; using engraved plates via a tool called burin. This only carves the inked places.

Margination

Handwritten comments in books on the margins, which sometimes contained commentary on the point of the book; so it wasn’t always unimportant or a side-note.

Preliminary leaves

Things like the title page, dedications, letters to the reader. These are usually printed last.

Publisher

Initial letters

The funky artistic big block that encompasses the beginning letter of the book or chapter. This was made out of woodblocks and usually distributed across prints, so it has some noticable wear.

Factoton

Initial letter box framing but without the letter inside of it. It’s just the border with an empty space inside, and the letter must be added in post.

Vellum and Parchment

Some early hand-pressed books were pressed on these two types of animal skins. But these were expensive, so they were phased out.

The compositor

The person setting the type

Typography

The arrangement of the page: what size the type will be used, how many illustrations, whether the book is in prose or verse.

Compartment sorts

What the type is stored in and categorized through, like letter, punctuation, or space.

Ligatures

A type where two letters are joined to make a single type, such as fl, fh, ff, and ff.

Composing stick

The metal frame a compositor held and into which he placed pieces of type that form the lines of text he was composing.

Justified text

When the text is evenly lined up against the margin.

Galley

A two or three sided wooden tray about the size of a page, which the contents from the compositing stick are put into. The contents of this will be slid off and maybe wrapped in paper, if the type will be sitting for a while.

Chase

The iron frame that will keep the type in place.

Headlines

The information at the very top of the page, usually including the work or section title and its page or leaf number.

Head sticks, side sticks, foot sticks, gutter sticks

The 4 sticks that create enough pressure on the type so it doesn’t shift. Same type of purpose as quoins and furniture. Acronym: HSFG

The Beater

The first pressman who evenly covers the forme with ink

The Puller

The second pressman that folds the tympan down onto the press stone so that the paper is resting on top of the inked forme

Printer Devils

Employed boys who take the printed sheets off the press, which speed up the rate of work.

Forme

The locked-up group of typeset pages inside a chase that prints one side of a sheet of paper. (The group of type that will print onto the page.)

Proofing

Checking the page for anything that needs correcting, and this act can happen in the middle of printing the book.

Smoke proof

When a punchcutter checks the letter by heating the end in the flame of a candle or lamp so that soot adheres to its surface and the letter can be printed

Dos-a-dos binding

Binding two books together so that they share a lower board, which is the middle of the volume, and the two exposed boards are the upper boards for each texts. French for "back-to-back”

Pieing the type

Moving the text blocks around in a way that scatters the type

Locking up

Wrapping the forme so that you can pick up the chase without it spilling everywhere

Platen

The large wooden block that presses the paper against the inked type

Ribs / Riding on Rails

The moving bed that you can move so you can press other parts of the paper that weren’t pressed due to a small platen size.

Verso

Printing on the back

Foliation or pagination

The top right of the right page of a book, which tells the page or the fold number

Peel

When the paper is dampened, you use this wooden tool to take it out and hang them over drying rods

Stab-stitched

A type of binding where a thread passes through near the edge of the spine a few times to gather the quires together.

Sammelband

A group of several works bound together in a single volume.

Hemp, flax rags, water, and gelatin.

The essential ingredients for making early modern paper

Hollander Beater

A machine that cuts the flax rags into small pieces and beats them

Vat

The large box that is filled with pulped rags and water. The pulp gets poured into here, and the vatman tends to it

Moulds

Wooden frames of woven wires that act as a sieve for the flax.

Deckle

The frame that goes around the mould, which keeps the flax from flying out when sieving.

Laid paper

Paper made traditionally with flax, moulds and a deckle. These papers are usually thinner.

Wove paper

Paper that is made from moulds of finely woven wires. Started replacing laid paper by the end of the 18th century.

Watermarks and countermarks

A little mark you can see on laid paper that was moulded into via the mould. Worked to identify the mill or district that the paper was made and also signified quality.

Couch (pronounced cooch)

The person that turns the paper out from the mould and onto completed sheets of cotton.

Spurs

Referring to groups of 4 to 8 sheets of drying paper hung over a rope.

Waterleaf

The name for the paper at the wet stage after it has been couched

Quires

The paper folded in half to create 24-25 sheets.

Ream

A bundle of 20 quires

Filigranology

The study of watermarks

Typeface

The style of the type, or what we call font nowadays

Matrix

an indented space that will be filled with hot metal to form the letter on the type

Nick

An indentation on the side of the type near its foot that indicates which way to orient the face

Ascender

A part of a type letter that goes above the x-height

Descender

A part of a type letter that goes below the x-height

Roman typeface

The typeface that we are primarily used to reading today. became the dominant form for printing in many places.

Single lay

A compartment sort for type. a single large box that contained all the sorts, with capital letters along the top and small letters below

Divided lay

A pair of cases with the capitals and small letters in the upper case and the small letters in the lower case

Broadside

A sheet of paper that is not folded, but is still printed on

Octavo

A sheet of paper comprised of 8 leaves, 16 pages

Duodecimo

Also called a twelvemo. A sheet of paper comprised of 12 leaves, or 24 pages.

Stop-press changes

A type of change that is noticed during the print run and deemed important enough to stop the presses and correct it.

The binder (as in the person)

The person that hammers flat the blocks of sheet

Pastedown

The outermost wrapper binding sheet that is pasted onto the inner side of the upper and lower boards of the binding.

Endleaf

The leaf that is tied to the pastedown

Flyleaves

The leaves added to the binder

Binding boards

The boards that make book covers stiff.

Pasteboard

Book covers that were made from paper glued together

Pulpboard

Book covers that were made from sheets of paper pressed together

Millboard

Boards that were made from pulped ropes and hemp

Published by Privilege

A book that is given right to be published by an institution of authority. This right was often exclusive and assigned to books that were guaranteed sellers

Volvelles

Movable diagrams made from disks or other shapes of paper layered on top of each other so that they can turn separately.