A working glossary for turning a document into a book. No prior knowledge assumed — every term has a plain definition and a picture to hold in mind. Bookmark it and come back whenever a word trips you up.
About this series. These are field notes from a Gurugo Labs consulting engagement to produce a traditional trilingual (Sanskrit · Tamil · English) devotional book for a client. This glossary is the reference we lean on throughout; the client is anonymized, and each term is explained for any team doing similar work.
Publishing borrows vocabulary from two worlds — computing (how text is stored) and typography/print (how it's shaped and produced). Here's the whole set, grouped so it builds up naturally.
1. How a computer stores letters
Character — the idea of a letter: the letter "A", the letter "क". A concept, not a drawing.
Glyph — the drawing of a character in a particular style. "A" in two fonts is the same character, two different glyphs. Rule of thumb: character = what you mean; glyph = how it looks.
Encoding — the dictionary that says which number stands for which character. Computers store text as numbers; an encoding is the agreed lookup.
ASCII — a very old, very small encoding (1960s) covering only English letters, digits, and basic punctuation — about 128 characters. No Devanagari, Tamil, or accents. The bare "starter set."
Unicode — the modern, universal encoding that gives every character in every writing system its own number. Store your text as Unicode and it opens correctly anywhere, in any font that has the letters.
Ligature / conjunct — two or more letters drawn as one joined shape (English "fi", or a Devanagari conjunct like क्ष). One glyph, several characters.
2. Fonts and type
Font — a complete set of glyph drawings. Choosing a font is like choosing someone's handwriting.
Typeface vs font — strictly, a typeface is the design family (e.g. "Gentium"), and a font is one specific version of it (Gentium Bold, at a size). In everyday speech people say "font" for both; just know the distinction exists.
Serif vs sans-serif — serif fonts have little feet on the letter ends (like Times); sans-serif ("sans" = without) don't (like Arial). Serifs are traditional for book body text; sans is common for screens and headings.
Weight & style — variations within a typeface: Regular, Bold, Italic, Light, etc. Each is technically its own font file.
Point size — how big the type is, measured in points (there are 72 points to an inch). Book body text is often around 10–12 points.
TrueType / OpenType (.ttf / .otf) — the common font file formats. When someone says "add the font file," they mean one of these.
Font fallback / "tofu" — if the current font lacks a glyph for a character, the system substitutes another font — or, if none is found, draws an empty box (☐), nicknamed tofu. Boxes where your Tamil or Devanagari should be = the font can't draw those letters.
Complex script & shaping — scripts like Devanagari, Tamil, and Arabic where letters change shape and reorder depending on their neighbours. The software step that arranges them correctly is called shaping. It's why these scripts need proper support, not just any font.
Font slot — in documents, text can carry more than one font assignment at once: a Latin slot and a separate complex-script slot for scripts like Devanagari/Tamil. Set only the Latin slot and your Indic text falls back to tofu. (This one trips up a lot of people.)
Combining mark — a small sign that can't stand alone and must attach to a letter: a vowel sign, a dot, an accent. Like the two dots over ü — meaningless in space, meaningful on the u.
The dotted circle ( ◌ ) — when a combining mark loses its base letter, the font parks it on a little dotted ring to signal "I'm homeless." Mystery circles in your text = orphaned marks.
Grapheme cluster — a base letter plus all its attached marks, treated as one unit — a letter wearing a hat. Never cut text in the middle of one, or the hat falls off (that's the dotted circle again).
Embedding a font — packaging the actual font file inside an ebook or PDF so it displays correctly on devices that don't have that font installed. Crucial for non-Latin scripts.
Font license / OFL — fonts come with rules about redistribution. Many system fonts may not be embedded in files you share. The SIL Open Font License (OFL) — used by the free Noto fonts — explicitly permits embedding, so it's the safe choice for anything you distribute.
3. Typography: spacing and arrangement of type
Leading (line spacing) — the vertical space between lines of text. Too tight feels cramped; too loose feels disconnected. (The word comes from the strips of lead old typesetters slid between lines.)
Kerning — adjusting the space between two specific letters so they sit comfortably (like tucking "A" and "V" closer).
Tracking (letter-spacing) — adjusting spacing evenly across a whole run of text — used gently on headings, avoided in body text.
Justified vs ragged — justified text has straight left and right edges (the spaces stretch to fill each line); ragged (left-aligned) has an even left edge and a natural right edge. Justification on long-word scripts can open ugly gaps.
4. Making the pages (typesetting & layout)
Typesetting — arranging text and images on pages deliberately: fonts, sizes, spacing, margins, what sits where. The craft that makes pages look intentional.
Layout software — a program built for typesetting (like the free Scribus), giving control a word processor can't.
Recto / verso — the right-hand page (recto) and left-hand page (verso) of an open book. The two seen together are a spread.
Facing pages — designing left and right as a pair (essential when they relate — one language on the left, another on the right).
Master page — a template. Put a page number or a rule on the master and it appears on every page using it; edit the master, change them all.
Front matter — the pages before the main content: title page, foreword, table of contents, and so on.
Running header — the repeating line at the top of each page (often the current section title).
5. Pictures and colour, for print
Vector vs raster — a vector image is described by shapes and math, so it stays razor-sharp at any size (file type SVG). A raster image is a grid of coloured dots — a photo (PNG, JPEG); enlarge it and it blurs.
Resolution / DPI — dots-per-inch in a raster image. 300 DPI is the print standard: too little looks fuzzy; too much just bloats the file.
RGB vs CMYK — RGB (red-green-blue light) is how screens make colour; CMYK (cyan-magenta-yellow-black inks) is how printing presses do. Bright screen colours can dull in CMYK — why a vivid yellow can print golden.
Bleed, trim, spine — trim is the final cut edge of the page; bleed is artwork extended a few millimetres past the trim so a slightly-off cut leaves no white sliver; the spine is the back edge where a cover wraps, its width set by the book's thickness.
6. The finished formats (print & digital)
PDF — a fixed "photograph of the pages." Looks identical everywhere; doesn't re-wrap to small screens.
EPUB — the standard ebook format, in two kinds: reflowable (text re-wraps to any screen and font size, like a website — but loses your exact layout) and fixed-layout (keeps the designed pages, like a PDF in ebook clothing).
7. Moving text between scripts and formats
Transliteration vs translation — translation carries the meaning to another language; transliteration carries the sound/spelling to another script, meaning unchanged (Sanskrit शान्ति → Tamil ஶாந்தி — same word, Tamil letters).
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) — software that reads the letters in a scanned image and turns a picture of a page back into editable text.
Why this vocabulary matters
Every one of these words marks a decision a book makes that a Word document makes for you silently. Once you can name them, you can choose them — and the rest of this series (each article a single problem, its cause, and its fix) will read like plain sense instead of jargon.