I was a bookseller for ten years, I’ve been a librarian for nearly 20, and a published author for more than ten, and I still learned a few things from this article.
In publishing, as in any other industry, we scatter our days with curious and unusual words which we take for granted. But even for us, new ones pop up to surprise us every now and then. Thinking of Blippar and Wibalin here—though I thought for a while that our books were bound with wibbling. Which made me laugh! Here to entertain and explain are ten bits of jargon, don’t use them all at once….
3) GSM
Grams per square metre: a term used to specify the weight of paper. As an example, a standard piece of A4 paper is 90gsm and a standard printed fiction book might be printed on 52-120gsm. An illustrated book might be printed on glossy “photographic” paper so the pictures show up well, on a heavier weight of paper than used for a standard novel.
Michael Sauers is the Director of Logan Library in Logan, UT. Prior to this he was one of the founding staff and Technology Manager for Do Space in Omaha, NE. After earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany's School of Information Science and Policy Michael spent his first 20 years as a librarian training other librarians in technology along with time as a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, a technology consultant, and a bookseller. He has written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and has published 14 books ranging from library technology, blogging, Web design, and an index to a popular horror magazine. In his spare time, he blogs at TravelinLibrarian.info, runs The Collector's Guide to Dean Koontz website at CollectingKoontz.com, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
Unless otherwise stated, all opinions are my own and are not to be considered those of the City of Logan, UT.
View all posts by Michael Sauers
One Reply to “Publishing Jargon-Buster: Ten Words Unpacked”
I was never actually in the publishing industry, but I’ve always thought kerning was strictly aesthetic–bringing certain letter pairs closer together. What the article describes as kerning (to fit more text in the same space) is what I’d call tracking: It’s an entirely different process. Kerning involves specific pairs, tracking involves between-letter spacing in general.
I was a bookseller for ten years, I’ve been a librarian for nearly 20, and a published author for more than ten, and I still learned a few things from this article.
I was never actually in the publishing industry, but I’ve always thought kerning was strictly aesthetic–bringing certain letter pairs closer together. What the article describes as kerning (to fit more text in the same space) is what I’d call tracking: It’s an entirely different process. Kerning involves specific pairs, tracking involves between-letter spacing in general.