Publishing terms

A glos­sary of terms, words, slang and shop talk used in the jour­nal­ism, book pub­lish­ing, print­ing, and writ­ing pro­fes­sions, cir­ca 1999

ad
Adver­tise­ment.

add
Copy to be added to a story already writ­ten.

advance
1. A pre­lim­i­nary story describ­ing a future event. 2. To move a story
up in pri­or­i­ty (“We’re advanc­ing the scan­dal story to the front
page.”)

angle
The aspect empha­sized in a story.

assign­ment
The task or story a reporter must cov­er.

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back­ground
1. A story that is not assigned a dead­line. (See also “back­grounder.”)
2. Any infor­ma­tion that is giv­en to reporter not specif­i­cal­ly for a
quote, but for gen­er­al infor­ma­tion on a sub­ject.

back­grounder
A story that details the back­ground of a sub­ject. (“I’m assigned to do
a back­grounder on the new com­pa­ny.”)

bank
See deck.

ban­ner
A head­line that extends across the page or screen.

beat
The area or sub­ject mat­ter that a reporter reg­u­lar­ly cov­ers.

blind inter­view
An inter­view which does not give the name of the per­son inter­viewed.

blurb
Short phrase issued by a pub­lish­er to pro­mote the sale of a book.

BOD
“Book-on-demand”; method of book print­ing where each book is pro­duced
as it is ordered.

boil down
To reduce in size.

break
1. The time when a story has been pub­lished. (“When did that story
break?”) 2. The first news source to report a story. (“An indie
Web site first broke the scan­dal.”)

brief
A brief story.

bump
1. To move some­thing ahead or behind sched­ule. (“We’re going to bump
this story up to Tues­day.”) 2. To increase or decrease. (“We’ll bump
your pay­ment up to com­pen­sate you for the extra work you did.”)

byline
The author’s name at the begin­ning of a story.

cap­tion
The descrip­tive text for an illus­tra­tion; often cred­its the name of
the photog­ra­ph­er or artist who made the illus­tra­tion. Also “cut line”
or “cut­line.”

case­bound
See “hard­bound.”

clip
A col­lec­tion of a writer’s pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished work, used to show the
tal­ent and inter­ests of a writer. (“Can you send me some clips on the
sub­ject?”)

codex
A book made of bound pages.

copy
The text of a story.

copy­read­er
One who edits and gives head­lines to news stories.

cov­er
To research and put togeth­er a story.

cred­it
Acknowl­edg­ing the source for a giv­en fact.

cub
A begin­ning reporter. Also “rook­ie.”

cut
Remove a por­tion of a story.

cut line
See “cap­tion.”

dai­ly
A pub­li­ca­tion that pub­lish­es every day.

deck
Part of the head­line which sum­ma­rizes the story. Also “deck copy,” “bank.”

dog watch
See “lob­ster shift.”

editori­al­ize
To inject the opin­ion of the writer in a story.

filler
Short news stories or tid­bits used to fill space.

flak
A low-posi­tion spokesper­son for a com­pa­ny.

flash
Short news sum­ma­ry of an event.

fol­low-up
A story that gives new devel­op­ments about the sub­ject of a pre­vi­ous­ly
pub­lished story.

folio
Page num­ber.

foto
Photograph.

fotog
Photog­ra­ph­er.

free­lancer
One work works for hime­self, and is not employed by the pub­lish­er; a
free­lance assign­ment is one giv­en to a writer not employed by the
pub­lish­er. Also “free-lancer.”

fyi
For your infor­ma­tion.

get
A very good, or exclu­sive, inter­view.

graf
Para­graph.

hard­bound
A codex book whose cov­er mate­r­i­al is hard and not flex­i­ble. Also
“hard­back” or “case­bound.”

head
See “head­line.”

head­line
Title of a story.

inset
1. Cor­rect­ing copy insert­ed into a piece that is already type­set. 2.
Any mate­r­i­al insert­ed into some­thing larg­er: pages, copy,
illus­tra­tion, adver­tise­ments. (“The cor­rec­tions in the book’s new edi­tion were made
with inset copy — you can see that the type­face is slight­ly
dif­fer­ent.”)

journo
1. Jour­nal­ist. 2. Jour­nal­ism.

kick­er
The first sen­tence or first few words of a story’s lead, set in a font
size larg­er than the body text of the story.

kill
To delete copy; to remove an item from the pub­li­ca­tion sched­ule (“In
light of the air­plane tragedy, the editor decid­ed to kill the air­line
humor story.”)

kill fee
Fee paid to reporter for a killed story; usu­al­ly a per­cent­age of the
nor­mal fee.

lead
The lead para­graph or sen­tence in a story.

lede
See “lead.”

leg man
A reporter who gath­ers news.

library
A pub­li­ca­tion’s pri­vate col­lec­tion of files, clips, illus­tra­tions,
pre­pared bios/obits, etc.

lob­ster shift
Work­ing in the hours after a pub­li­ca­tion has gone to print.

mast­head
The page of a pub­li­ca­tion that gives its staff and editor­i­al infor­ma­tion.

morgue
See “library.”

mug shot
A head-and-shoul­ders pic­ture of an indi­vid­ual.

net sales
Num­ber of actu­al sales of a book (ie, not count­ing copies sent to
dis­tributors and lat­er returned).

nut graf
Para­graph in a story con­tain­ing the “meat” details of what the story
is all about, often direct­ly fol­low­ing an anec­do­tal lead.

obit
Obit­u­ary.

on spec
Sub­mit­ting a piece on the “spec­u­la­tion” that the editor will accept
it, a prac­tice more new free-lancers

op-ed
“Oppo­site editor­i­al” — fea­tures page usu­al­ly print­ed oppo­site a
news­pa­per’s editor­i­al page, often con­tain­ing pieces pre­sent­ing a
posi­tion on an issue which is the opin­ion of the author and not
nec­es­sar­i­ly (or usu­al­ly) the opin­ion of the paper. Also “O&E.”

orphan
A sin­gle line of text begin­ning a para­graph or sec­tion of text and
appear­ing at the bottom of a page.

pad
To make longer.

paste-up
A page’s indi­vid­ual ele­ments assem­bled in its lay­out on a board
(usu. by _pasting_ or tap­ing); used to make the photograph­ic plates
which are then print­ed.

pic
Pic­ture or illus­tra­tion.

pitch
Story idea sent to an editor by a reporter.

pix
Pic­tures.

play up
Empha­size. (“Why don’t you play up the infi­deli­ty angle?”)

pork
Mate­r­i­al held for lat­er use, if need­ed.

POD
“Print-on-demand.” See BOD.

pull quote
A quo­ta­tion from an arti­cle, some­times edit­ed for brevi­ty, dis­played
in larg­er type as a fig­ure to the body of the arti­cle. (Also
“pul­lquote.”)

puff
Editori­al­ized, com­pli­men­ta­ry state­ments in a story.

puff piece
A news story that con­tains a lot of puff.

query
A pitch, usu­al­ly for longer, editor­i­al or mag­a­zine pieces.

redlet­ter
Exclu­sive, break­ing news cov­er­age of a major news event, print­ed in red type.

retrac­tion
A pub­li­ca­tion’s with­draw­al of a pre­vi­ous­ly-pub­lished story or
fact. (“The _Times_ retract­ed their com­ments on the man.”)

revi­sion
A re-writ­ten or improved story, often with addi­tion­al quotes or facts.

rook­ie
See “cub.”

run
1. To put an item on sched­ule for pub­li­ca­tion (“Let’s run this item in
the gos­sip col­umn.”) 2. A reporter’s beat.

sacred cow
News or pro­mo mate­r­i­al which a pub­lish­er or editor demands be
pub­lished, often for per­son­al rea­sons.

scoop
1. An exclu­sive or first-pub­lished story. (“That story you did was a
nice scoop.”) 2. A syn­onym for “tip.” (“I got anoth­er great scoop from
her.”)

sell-through
Per­cent­age amount of net sales for a book.

short
See “brief.”

source
An indi­vid­ual whose state­ments are used for mate­r­i­al in a story.

spec
See “on spec.”

stet
Proof­read­er’s mark for “restore to con­di­tion before mark up.”

street edi­tion
The edi­tion of a news­pa­per that comes out first and is avail­able “on
the streets” such as at news­stands.

sub­head
A small­er one-line head­line for a story.

TK
Proof­read­er’s inser­tion mark for data “to come”; also “TKTK.”

take
A sec­tion of a run­ning story.

tie back
See “tie in.”

tie in
Part of the story that reit­er­ates past events in order to make recent
devel­op­ments clear. Also “tie back.” (“Your piece is good, but the
tie-in is weak.”)

tip
Infor­ma­tion about a poten­tial story that has not been bro­ken.

top heads
Head­lines at the top of a col­umn.

trim
To reduce the length of a story.

vet

week­ly
A pub­li­ca­tion that pub­lish­es once a week.

wid­ow
A sin­gle line of text end­ing a para­graph or sec­tion of text and
appear­ing at the top of a page.

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For more, see “Glos­sary of Print­ing and Allied Terms” in the third edi­tion of Words into Type (pg. 535), in print for more than a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry and still unpar­al­leled.