S

Saddle stitch: The binding of booklets or other printed materials by stapling the pages on the folded spine; also called saddle wire.

Safety paper: A paper that shows sign of erasure so that it cannot be altered or tampered with easily.

Sans serif: A typeface that does not have serifs. Generally a low-contrast design. Sans serif faces lend a clean, simple appearance to documents.

Saturation: The purity or vividness of a color, expressed as the absence of white. A color that has 100% saturation contains no white. A color with 0% saturation is a shade of gray.

Serif: Small decorative strokes that are added to the end of a letter's main strokes. Serifs improve readability by leading the eye along the line of type.

Satin finish: A smooth, delicately embossed finished paper with sheen.

Scaling: The enlargement or reduction of an image or copy to fit a specific area.

Scanning: A process that uses electronic equipment to create a digital file from any original. BMC can scan negatives and slides in all sizes, flat art pieces or X-rays.

Scoring: To impress paper with a rule for the purpose of making folding easier.

Screen: Gray or other tint created by using a percentage of a color

Screen font: low-resolution (that is, screen resolution) bitmaps of type characters that show the positioning and size of characters on the screen. As opposed to the printer font, which may be high-resolution bitmaps or font outline masters.

Screened print: A photo print made by using a halftone negative; also called a velox.

Script: connected, flowing letters resembling hand writing with pen or quill. Either slanted or upright. Sometimes with a left-hand slant.

Scum: Unwanted ink marks in the non-image area.

Serif: in a typeface, a counterstroke on letterforms, projecting from the ends of the main strokes. For example, Times or Dutch is a serifed typeface. Some typefaces have no serifs; these typefaces are called sans serif.

Set width: in typography, the horizontal width of characters. Typefaces vary in the average horizontal set width of each character (for example, Times has a narrow set width), and set widths of individual characters vary in typeset copy depending on the shape of the character and surrounding characters.

Sharpen: To decrease the dot size of the halftone, which in turn decreases the color strength.

Show through: A problem that occurs when the printing on one side of a sheet is seen from the other side.

Sidebar: in newsletter/magazine layout, a related story or block of information that is set apart from the main body text, usually boxed and/or screened.

Signature: A printed sheet with many pages on it that is folded so that the pages are in their proper numbered sequence, as in a book.

Skew: To slant an object vertically, horizontally, or both.

Small caps: capital letters set at the x-height of the font.

Smoothness: That quality of paper defined by its levelness that allows for pressure consistency in printing, assuring uniformity of print.

Soft dot: An excessively large halo around a dot in a photograph that causes a fringe that diminishes the dot intensity.

Solarization: a photographic image in which both blacks and whites appear black, while midtones approach white.

Solid: lines of type with no space between the lines (unleaded).

Spiral bind: A binding whereby a wire or plastic is spiraled through holes punched along the binding side.

Spot color separation: for offset printing, separation of solid premixed ink colors (for example, green, brown, light blue, etc.); used when the areas to be colored are not adjacent. Spot color separations can be indicated on the tissue cover of the mechanical, or made with overlays.

Spread: in a double-sided document, the combination of two facing pages, which are designed as a unit. Also, the adjacent inside panels of a brochure when opened.

Standing elements: in page design, elements that repeat exactly from page to page, not only in terms of style, but also in terms of page position and content. The most commonly used standing elements are page headers or footers, with automatic page numbers.

Standoff: the amount of space between a clock of text and a graphic, or between two blocks of text that wrap.

Step and repeat: A process of generating multiple exposures by taking an image and stepping it according to a predetermined layout.

Stet: A proofreader's symbol that is usually written in the copy margin, that indicates that the copy, which was marked for correction, should be left as it was.

Stress: in a typeface, the axis around which the strokes are drawn: oblique (negative or positive) or vertical. Not to be confused with the angle of the strokes themselves (for instance, italics are made with slanted strokes, but may not have oblique stress).

Stock photography: Photographs of people or things that can be purchased for use in print or on the web.

Storyboard: A series of small, rough sketches that are used to plan the different story scenes in a video production or advertisement. Each scene includes the script and headlines that will be used.

Stroke weight: in a typeface, the amount of contrast between thick and thin strokes. Different typefaces have distinguishing stroke-weight characteristics.

Style sheet: in desktop publishing program, style sheets contain the typographic specifications to be associated with tagged text. They can be used to set up titles, headings, and the attributes of blocks of text, such as lists, tables, and text associated with illustrations. The use of style sheets is a fast and efficient way to insure that all comparable elements are consistent.

Subpaths: Paths that are part of one object.

Subhead: a secondary phrase usually following a headline. Display line(s) of lesser size and importance than the main headline(s).

Subscript: a character slightly smaller than the rest of the font, set below the baseline; used in chemical equations and as base denotation in math, and sometimes as the denominator of fractions.

Superscript: a character slightly smaller than the rest of the font, set above the baseline, used for footnote markers and sometimes as the numerator of fractions.

Swatch: One of a series of solid-colored patches used as a sample when selecting color. A printed booklet of swatches is called a swatchbook. Swatch also refers to the colors contained in the Color Palette.