B Terms
Baseline Seems pretty obvious-it's the line on which letters stand. But did you realize that most curved-bottom letters (like S, C or G) extend slightly below the baseline?
Bad Break Some people think these disappeared when computers began making line-ending decisions. But any break in text that violates an established typesetting or grammatical rule is still a bad break, even if it passes Quark's default muster.
Bastard Title You've seen this page in every book-it's the one with just the book name-usually just before the main title page. Sometimes called the half-title page.
Bitmap/Screen Font With Type 1 fonts, you need a different font for screen display than for printing, thus the bitmap, Unless you use Adobe Type Manager, of course, which creates screen fonts from outline fonts. But even then, you need to install at least one bitmap font (which are contained in font suitcases), at least on the Mac. Whew!
Blad You know about greeking text. But did you know this term for dummy book pages that appear in pre-release promotional materials?
Bolle A Danish type of sweet bread, or "little round cake," this is the tiny circle over the A or a in Scandinavian. Also called a ring.
Bounce When the baseline of a word gets all goofy, call it this. Sometimes referred to as asymmetrical or off the line.
Brace is the character used to connect or embrace lines, particularly in math {}. Not the same as brackets, which are square [], except in Britain, where they refer to parenthesis () as brackets.
Built-in Fonts All fonts have to make their way to the printer before your job can print (at least with PostScript printers). Most printers come with some fonts permanently built in-these generally match the ones that ship with the Apple Mac and Windows operating systems. Sometimes they're called resident fonts. All fonts that are not built in have to be downloaded to the printer from your computer during the printing process. This happens automatically when you hit the "print" button.
Bullet Of course you knew this is a solid, round dot. But did you also realize it's sometimes called a meatball?