| Alphanumeric | A mixture of letters and numbers – often used in passwords. |
| Applications programme (program) | Programmes which carry out a particular task such as word processing packages, databases and spreadsheets. |
| ASCII | American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A standard way of assigning numerical codes to characters and control codes. |
| Background printing | Printing which takes place whilst allowing the computer to carry out another task. |
| Bar codes | Printed codes made from vertical lines of different thickness used for fast error free data entry. |
Baud Rate
| A measure of the speed of data transmission used by serial communications between printer and computer. When setting up a serial interface the baud rate settings on the computer and printer must be the same. |
| Bidirectional printing | Printing in which the print head goes from left to right only on every other line – on other lines it does from right to left. This increases the speed of printing as the head prints in both directions. |
| Binary | The base 2 number system which uses only the two digits 0 and 1. |
| Bit | A Binary digit – the smallest numeric unit used by printers and computers. |
| bps | Bits per second – a measure of the speed of data communications. |
| Buffer | An area within the electronics of the printers in which data, sent from the computer, is stored before it is printed. Also known as printer memory. |
| Byte | A group of eight bits, which together make a unit which can be used to represent a character of number. |
| CMYK | Colour printing based around cyan, magenta, yellow and black. |
| Condensed printing | Printing in which each character is narrower than normal – useful for fitting wide tables or spreadsheets onto the paper. |
| Configure | To prepare a piece of equipment or a programme so that it will work with other software or equipment. |
| cpi | Characters per inch. |
| cps | Characters per second |
| Daisy wheel printer | A type of letter quality printer that uses a round removable print head made from a spoked disk with a pre-formed character at the end of each spoke (daisywheel) |
| Default | Settings that take effect when equipment is turned on. |
| Desktop publishing | Using a computer to format pages of text and graphics rather than doing the same job manually with paste and scissors. |
| Dot matrix printer | A printer which creates characters from patterns of dots. Usually used to refer to serial impact and ink-jet printers although laser printers are also dot matrix printers. |
| DOS | Disk Operating System |
| dpi | Dots per inch |
| Expansion board | A type of circuit board which allows the user to fit extra memory. |
| Impact printer | A type of printer which forms characters by the impact of pins or pre-formed characters through a ribbon on to the paper. |
| Ink jet printer | A type of dot matrix printer which forms characters by squirting tiny drops of ink onto the paper. |
| Interface | The electrical connection between the printer and the computer – usually serial or parallel. |
| Jumper | A moveable connection between two parts of an electrical circuit. |
| Justify | To print text with even left and right margins – each line of text is the same length. |
| Kb | Kilobyte. 1024 bytes |
| Laser printer | A non-impact page printer which uses both laser and electronic copying technology. Laser light is used to create an image on a photosensitive drum which then attracts toner powder; the toner is then deposited onto the paper and fixed in place by heat. |
| LCD | Liquid Crystal Display. A visual display where each character is formed from segments which darken when a current is passed through. |
| Line printer | A printer which prints an entire line of characters as one unit. |
| Macro | A method of storing groups of settings that can be executed with a single key press. |
| Mb | Megabyte. 1,048,576 bytes or 1024 Kb |
| OCR | Optical character recognition. Recognising characters from a scanned document and converting them into a digital form suitable for use within a computer. |
| Operating system | The programme which controls the flow of data in a computer and its peripherals. |
| ppm | Pages per minute. A measure of how fast a printer can print each page. |
| Parallel Interface | A type of interface that allows parallel transmission of data when a number of bits, usually a byte, are transmitted at the same time. |
| Parity | A technique for detecting errors in data sent to the printer via a serial interface. |
| Peripheral | Any device such as a printer or display connected to a computer. |
| Pixel | Smallest displayed unit of a bit-mapped image. |
| RGB | Red, Green, Blue |
| Serial printer | A printer that prints one character at a time. |
| Spooling | Temporary storage of data from a computer before sending to a printer. |
| WYSIWYG | What You See Is What You Get. The ability of some applications programmes to provide an accurate screen representation of the text that will be printed. |
