Origination - at the beginning
A catch-all term to refer to all of the preparatory stages for printing including typesetting, creating halftones and colour reproduction.

Overs – change the bowler
In printing, when the printer and customer agree a percentage of overs and unders, and which refers to a quantity allowance on the number of printed copies that the printer may over or under produce and deliver and charge to the customer. Sounds crazy and a great way for the printer to increase the invoice value, but does cater for any spoiled during production.

Pantone™ – printing by numbers
Something grannies used to make their siblings’ siblings do to keep them quiet. A jolly clever concept the grown up version though: match up the colours you get on screen precisely with ink colours for print using a register of precisely pre-defined colours.

PgDn – qwerty gobbledegook
Just look at your keyboard and the chances are that you’ll have been PgDn’d or PgUp’d or Num Lk’d. PC manufacturers’ very own pigeon English.

Pica – ‘p a penguin
If you can remember that ad you’re as ancient as ancient can be. If you’re a wordsmith you’ll know this one. If you’re not you’ll probably not care anyway. It’s the width of characters in a typeface, with I’m told, a norm of 12 characters to an inch.

Piggy-back – useful for the one with a bad leg
An offer that is included with the main one being mailed out.

Pixel – one size down from a pixie
Or at least it’s the electronic equivalent. The smallest single unit or point on a screen display.

Point – finger direction
The obvious cursor action aside, bet you didn’t know though that in typography a point size is the height of a character equal to 1/72th of an inch. Do you think I should get a life?

PostScript™– what is written on an envelope
The clever bods at Adobe invented this one. Without it you’d be seriously compromised when trying to size and reposition your text so that it prints perfectly on any printer regardless of the printer’s own internal settings.

P.P. – sheer desperation
Postage paid, usually referring to an envelope which carries a Royal Mail imprint and therefore does not need a stamp.

Processor – works well in a kitchen
The clever bit of the kit that makes your computer think about what you've asked it to do. Push it too hard and it'll freeze. Push it harder still and you'll get the Blue Screen of Death, God forbid.

QWERTY – sticking together
Bet you didn’t know that the keyboard configuration we use today was devised by a C.L.Sholes, who was responsible for designing the very first commercially produced typewriter in the late 1860s. His first keyboard followed a simple A-Z sequence but he found that having the most frequently used letters too close together caused the mechanical typebars to jam too regularly. The QWERTY layout reduced the chances of this happening. Shame he didn’t have a sense of humour and assign an ‘S’ as the first key.