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One topic that comes up from time to time was
expressed yesterday:
"Although it's true that most printers cannot print
right to the edge of paper (another problem that
confounds many people), it's very unlikely that
this is your problem; the unprintable margin is
usually no more than 1/4"."
It is relatively simple to understand, and
understanding it once you'll never have the question
again:
Sheet-fed mechanical devices like printers and
printing presses must "grab" the pages to move through
the machine in some manner. Generally, they attach to
the edge of the paper to pull it through the machine.
Thus, one edge cannot be printed upon for the simple
reason that it would be printing upon the mechanical
bits that do the "grabbing"!
Those pieces you see that are printed to the page edge
(a "bleed" in the colorful printers' jargon) are
generally printed on larger paper, which is trimmed to
produce the finished page size.
It gets quite tricky when you're considering binding
techniques, by the way. For instance, when printers
are setting up a job that will be bound into a book,
as you probably know there are a number of page
spreads that are stacked on top of each other for
binding. Obviously, the pages on the bottom must have
the "gutters" (space between page images) much wider
than the top ones in order for the finished piece to
look uniform from page to page. This "binding creep"
is allowed for in prepress planning--and is one of the
reasons good pre-press operators must be highly
skilled.
It's a shame, really, that this is becoming less
common as more publications are moving to
all-electronic distribution.
Sorry for the possible overkill on such a basic item,
but I know there are various folks on the list who are
new to all this that might find it interesting!
David
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