Lesson 1

Exercise 1. Read and translate the text.

Preparation for Printing

Before any material can be printed, the text must be set in type and checked for accuracy, and illustrations must be prepared for reproduction. When a manuscript is delivered to a printer, the first step is to choose a type for the text and typeset the material. Until recently hot-metal typesetting was used, so called because the type was cast from a molten lead alloy. Today most typesetting is done by a procedure called photocomposition, also known as cold-type composition.

In the early days of photocomposition, an operator typed the text into the composing machine, following instructions on type size and style, the length of each text line, and the space between lines. With the advent of computers, the process has become more automated. In many systems, operators can typeset text directly from an author's floppy disk or through telecommunication lines that transmit the text from the author's computer to the composing machine.

When typesetting is complete, a preliminary copy of the text, in the form of galley proofs or page proofs, is sent to a proof-reader. The proof-reader checks these proofs against the original material and marks misspelled words, typographical mistakes, lines dropped or repeated, and other errors. The corrected proofs are returned to the typesetter, who makes the necessary changes.

Because typesetting can produce only letters, numbers and symbols, and punctuation marks, illustrations are prepared separately from the text. A simple line drawing, without grey tones, can be printed as a line reproduction without any special handling. More complicated black-and-white illustrations, particularly photographs, must undergo a halftone process. Each illustration is photographed through a screen that breaks down the tones and shading into tiny dots of varying sizes. Larger and more closely packed dots create the impression of darker shades, while smaller, more widely spaced dots convey lighter shading. By a special process, colour illustrations and photographs are analysed into four basic colours--red, blue, yellow, and black. Each colour is then applied separately in the printing process to re-create the four-colour image.

The text, line drawings, and other illustrations are arranged as they will appear on the final printed pages. All but the halftones are pasted down on a board or stiff paper; space is left where the halftones will be placed later. The completed page is called a mechanical, or camera-ready copy. In the 1980s computerized, or electronic, publishing (also known in some instances as desktop publishing) had begun to replace these methods.

The mechanicals are photographed, and the negatives are processed. Halftones are prepared on separate negatives and then stripped in, or aligned, in the blank spaces left for them during paste-up. The resulting composite negative is then used to make what is known as a printing plate. Usually this is a metal plate that has been coated with a photosensitive material and subsequently exposed to the composite negative. The texts and illustrations are finally burned, or chemically etched, into the plate, which is then ready for printing.