Slug (typesetting)

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Whole line type slug, print side. When printed, it reads "Sefan Kuhn". Linotype Zeilenblock Frontansicht.jpg
Whole line type slug, print side. When printed, it reads "Sefan Kühn".
Movable type on a composing stick on a type case, selected from a box of individual sorts Metal movable type.jpg
Movable type on a composing stick on a type case, selected from a box of individual sorts

In typesetting, a slug is any of several kinds of piece of lead or other type metal. One kind of slug is a piece of spacing material used to space paragraphs. In the era of commercial typesetting in metal type, they were usually manufactured in strips of 6-point lead. Another kind of slug is a single sort, bearing a single letter or any other symbol. More recently, a slug can be an entire line of Linotype typeset matter, where a single piece of lead has been cast bearing a line of text.

Contents

In modern typesetting programs such as Adobe InDesign, slugs hold printing information, customized color bar information, or display other instructions and descriptions for other information in the document. Objects (including text frames) positioned in the slug area are printed but will disappear when the document is trimmed to its final page size. [1]

Slugs, or slug lines, are also the name for incidental typeset lines of type that are intended either for the printer's or binder's benefit (such as a collation mark, a catch line, or a galley slug) or as advertising for the producer of the printed piece (such as a line of type showing the name of the printer, the printer's item number or job number, and the telephone number of the printer in order to make reorders simple).

Usage in web publishing

This term is also used in web publishing to refer to short article labels that may be used as part of a URL. Slugs are usually derived from an article's title and are limited in length, and to a specific set of characters (to prevent percent-encoding); often only letters, numbers, and hyphens are allowed. [2]

Related Research Articles

TeX, stylized within the system as TeX, is a typesetting system which was designed and written by computer scientist and Stanford University professor Donald Knuth and first released in 1978. TeX is a popular means of typesetting complex mathematical formulae; it has been noted as one of the most sophisticated digital typographical systems.

Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using dedicated software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online content. Desktop publishing software can generate page layouts and produce text and image content comparable to the simpler forms of traditional typography and printing. This technology allows individuals, businesses, and other organizations to self-publish a wide variety of content, from menus to magazines to books, without the expense of commercial printing.

In writing, a space is a blank area that separates words, sentences, syllables and other written or printed glyphs (characters). Conventions for spacing vary among languages, and in some languages the spacing rules are complex. Inter-word spaces ease the reader's task of identifying words, and avoid outright ambiguities such as "now here" vs. "nowhere". They also provide convenient guides for where a human or program may start new lines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Typesetting</span> Composition of text by means of arranging physical types or digital equivalents

Typesetting is the composition of text for publication, display, or distribution by means of arranging physical type in mechanical systems or glyphs in digital systems representing characters. Stored types are retrieved and ordered according to a language's orthography for visual display. Typesetting requires one or more fonts. One significant effect of typesetting was that authorship of works could be spotted more easily, making it difficult for copiers who have not gained permission.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linotype machine</span> Hot metal typesetting machine (1886–1980s)

The Linotype machine is a "line casting" machine used in printing which is manufactured and sold by the former Mergenthaler Linotype Company and related companies. It was a hot metal typesetting system that cast lines of metal type for one-time use. Linotype became one of the mainstays for typesetting, especially small-size body text, for newspapers, magazines, and posters from the late 19th century to the 1970s and 1980s, when it was largely replaced by phototypesetting and digital typesetting. The name of the machine comes from producing an entire line of metal type at once, hence a line-o'-type. It was a significant improvement over the previous industry standard of letter-by-letter manual typesetting using a composing stick and shallow subdivided trays, called "cases".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emphasis (typography)</span> Typographical distinction

In typography, emphasis is the strengthening of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text, to highlight them. It is the equivalent of prosody stress in speech.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kerning</span> Process in typography

In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning adjusts the space between individual letterforms while tracking (letter-spacing) adjusts spacing uniformly over a range of characters. In a well-kerned font, the two-dimensional blank spaces between each pair of characters all have a visually similar area. The term "keming" is sometimes used informally to refer to poor kerning.

Proofreading is an iterative process of comparing galley proofs against the original manuscripts or graphic artworks to identify transcription errors in the typesetting process. In the past, proofreaders would place corrections or proofreading marks along the margins. In modern publishing, material is generally provided in electronic form, traditional typesetting is no longer used and thus this kind of transcription no longer occurs. Consequently the part played by pure proofreaders in the process has almost vanished: the role has been absorbed into copy editing to such an extent that their names have become interchangeable.

In typography, leading is the space between adjacent lines of type; the exact definition varies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phototypesetting</span> Photographical analog method for text composition

Phototypesetting is a method of setting type which uses photography to make columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper. It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing which gave rise to digital typesetting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hot metal typesetting</span> Mechanical analog method for text composition

In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mold that has the shape of one or more glyphs. The resulting sorts or slugs are later used to press ink onto paper. Normally the typecasting machine would be controlled by a keyboard or by a paper tape.

A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. A computer font is designed and created using a font editor. A computer font specifically designed for the computer screen, and not for printing, is a screen font.

Letter spacing, character spacing or tracking is an optically consistent typographical adjustment to the space between letters to change the visual density of a line or block of text. Letter spacing is distinct from kerning, which adjusts the spacing of particular pairs of adjacent characters such as "7." which would appear to be badly spaced if left unadjusted, and leading, the spacing between lines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Page layout</span> Part of graphic design that deals in the arrangement of visual elements on a page

In graphic design, page layout is the arrangement of visual elements on a page. It generally involves organizational principles of composition to achieve specific communication objectives.

In typesetting and page layout, alignment or range is the setting of text flow or image placement relative to a page, column (measure), table cell, or tab.

Warichū is the Japanese word for the traditional East Asian typographic device of typesetting in small double lines editorial comments, notes, parenthetical comments, and other annotations that may or may not belong to the text proper. It is used for the same kind of text which in English would be placed between parentheses or brackets, or in footnotes. The word "warichū" itself is used in some computer programs that deal with "CJK" typesetting, and in discussions about CJK typography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Font</span> Particular size, weight and style of a typeface

In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece for each glyph. A typeface consists of various fonts that share an overall design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sort (typesetting)</span> Block with a typographic character etched on it, which is lined up with others to print text

In typesetting, a sort or type is a block with a typographic character etched on it, used—when lined up with others—to print text. In movable-type printing, the sort or type is cast from a matrix mold and assembled by hand with other sorts bearing additional characters into lines of type to make up a form, from which a page is printed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ludlow Typograph</span>

A Ludlow Typograph is a hot metal typesetting system used in letterpress printing. The device casts bars, or slugs of type, out of type metal primarily consisting of lead. These slugs are used for the actual printing, and then are melted down and recycled on the spot. It was used to print large-type material such as newspaper headlines or posters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of sentence spacing</span> Evolution of sentence spacing conventions from the introduction of movable type in Europe

The history of sentence spacing is the evolution of sentence spacing conventions from the introduction of movable type in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg to the present day.

References

  1. "Using Adobe InDesign CS4". Create new documents. Adobe Systems . Retrieved 2009-10-16.
  2. "Django Glossary". Django Documentation. Django Software Foundation. Retrieved 2009-07-09.

See also