It turns out that printing checks is surprisingly more complicated than most people imagine. You are probably asking yourself how paper and ink could be so complicated. You just put some ink on the paper and a check is born. There is a little more to it than that, especially if you take the safety of your business and your assets seriously. Why don't you let us take care of that so you can get back to running your business? However if it helps you, we have provided a glossary to some common terms in the check printing business.

As always, if you still have questions, please call us and let us help you.

ABA: American Bankers Association has financial and regulatory information for consumers, bankers and members of the financial services industry.

Aligning Edge: Bottom edge of a check when viewed from the face.

Alignment: Vertical variation between bottom edges of adjacent MICR characters.

Amount Field: Character positions within the MICR line of a check that contain the numeric value of the check.

Amount Symbol: Special MICR character used to separate the amount field from the adjacent field.

ANSI: American National Standards Institute is the premier source for timely, relevant, actionable information on national, regional, international standards and conformity assessment issues.

Auxiliary On-Us Field: Optional field to the left of the routing field on the MICR line, typically used on commercial checks for the placement of consecutive serial numbers.

Background: Color or image on a document not including any printed characters on the surface of the document.

Batch Header: Serially numbered process control document that precedes a batch of items to be entered for processing.

BFD: Bank of first deposit of a check.

Character: Graphic shape representing a letter, number, punctuation mark or other symbol.

Character Space/Position: Space or position where a magnetic ink character appears in the MICR line.

Character-to-Character Spacing: Distance between adjacent MICR characters, measured from the right edge of one character to the right edge of the adjacent character.

Check: Draft or order upon a financial institution for the payment of a sum of money to a named person or bearer, payable upon demand in the form of a document.

Check Digit: Digit, often positioned as a suffix, which can be computed from the other digits in a field with a mathematical formula. The check digit is used to check the validity of the total field.

Check Routing Number: Denominator of a fraction, located in the upper right corner, appearing on checks drawn on Federal Reserve banks. The numerator of the fraction is the ABA transit number.

Clear Band: Horizontal band measuring 0.625 inches high from the aligning edge of the document, parallel to that edge, and extending the length of the document; reserved for the printing of MICR characters.

CMC-7: Official name of the MICR font used in magnetic ink printing in France and countries in Europe, South America, and Asia. The font consists of ten numeric characters and five symbols.

Convenience Amount: Value of the check expressed in numbers. If this value differs from the legal amount, the legal amount prevails.

Curl: Distortion of paper that is often the result of paper being exposed to heat, pressure, moisture, and drying. Laser printing the same page more than once is a common cause, which can lead to paper jams.

Dash Symbol: Special MICR character sometimes used in the transit or on-us fields of the MICR line.

Debossment: Sunken impression of a printed character on a paper document caused by impact printing processes that use an excessive amount of pressure to imprint the character.

DIMM: Dual Inline Memory Modules are small integrated circuit boards used to add memory to computers/printers and fonts to printers.

Driver: Computer file that describes properties of a device (such as a printer) to the computer.

E-13B: Official designation of the font used in magnetic ink printing in the United States, Canada and several other countries. Use of the term E-13B generally implies both the character shape as well as the magnetic aspects of the printing. It consists of ten numeric characters and four symbols.

Embossment: Printing that is raised above the surface of the paper such as standard laser printing.

Encoding: Process of imprinting MICR characters on checks, deposit tickets, and other bank documents.

EPC: External Processing Code Field is a single-digit optional field for special purposes located to the immediate left of the routing field on a check.

Escape Character: Control code character corresponding to ASCII decimal code 27 and hexadecimal code 1B, that the printer reads as a command to be performed and not data to be printed.

Extraneous Ink: Any magnetic ink, other than the printed MICR characters, that is located within the clear band. Care must be taken to assure that no part of the text, lines, signatures, or other magnetic ink is printed in the clear band.

Field: Specified portion of the MICR line that is limited to a set of one or more characters that may be treated as a unit of information.

Font: Set of characters that have similar characteristics such as assigned name, typeface, spacing, height, pitch, style, stroke weight, symbol set, and orientation.

Font Cartridge: Small electronic component that is inserted into some printers in order to provide additional capabilities such as fonts or macros.

Font Height: Height of the body of a font's character measured in points; usually slightly greater than the distance from the bottom of a lower case descender to the top of an unaccented capital letter.

Grain: Direction of the fibers in a sheet of paper. Fibers in long grain papers run parallel to the long dimension of the cut sheet. Fibers in short grain papers run parallel to the short side.

Halftone: Printing process that expresses itself in the form of colored patterns of dots.

Home Bank: Bank from which a check (MICR document) has been drawn upon.

Intaglio Printing: Printing technique used to inhibit forgery by distorting the paper surface into two or more levels.

ISO: International Organization for Standardization has been a leading source of information about risk since 1971.

Landscape: Landscape orientation refers to printing across the length of the page.

Leading Edge: Right edge of a check when viewed from the face.

Legal Amount: Value of check expressed in text. If this value differs from the convenience amount, the legal amount prevails.

Logo: Name of company or product in a special design used as a trademark in advertising.

Macro: Series of laser printer escape code sequences, control codes, and data whose execution can be initiated with a single printer command.

Magnetic Ink: Printer ink/toner to which iron oxide particles have been added.

MICR: Magnetic Ink Character Recognition is a system consisting of magnetic ink printed characters that can be recognized by high-speed magnetic and/or optical recognition equipment.

MICR line: .25 inch high region centered in the clear band that contains the E-13B MICR characters.

OCR: Optical Character Recognition is where a machine reads by optical means of printed, human readable characters as opposed to optical mark or bar code reading.

On-Us Field: Data field in the MICR line on a check reserved for bank use which typically includes the account number and an optional processing code for business checks and the serial number on personal checks. An on-us symbol usually appears to the right of the account number.

On-Us Symbol: Special MICR character used in the on-us and auxiliary on-us fields.

Opacity: Property of a substance that prevents light from passing through it. Ink opacity is concerned with the ink coating preventing the reflectance showing through.

Orientation: Direction of printed characters on a page.

Pantograph: Printed patterns of a logo or art creating a decorative background. Typically intended as an anti-alteration security feature on a check.

Paper Dust: Particles of loose paper fibers and other residues that naturally accumulate inside printers.

Payee Line: Line on a check provided for the entry of the name of the party to whom the check is being paid.

Payment Document: Any paper document that is used to transfer funds from one party to another.

Pitch: Number of characters in a font that can be printed in a horizontal inch. Pitch only applies to fixed-space fonts.

Point: Measurement of font height approximately equals to 1/72nd inch.

Portrait: Refers to the printing across the width of a page (letter style).

Pre-encoding: Amount field encoding of deposited items prior to their receipt by a bank.

Print Contrast Signal (PCS): The difference, in the form of a ratio, of reflectivity of the background and data to the reflectivity of the check background.

Print Density: Relative darkness of print on the page that affects the amount of magnetic ink applied.

Reader/Sorter: High-speed automated paper handling machines that can recognize magnetic ink characters. Reading is done through recognition of the waveform of the character, it's magnetic pattern, it's visual structure, or a combination.

Read Head: Sensing device in readers/sorters that pick up the magnetic signals of MICR ink. These signals are converted into electrical pulses and subsequently interpreted by the reader's/sorter's processor.

Registration: Printing of variable data so that it fits correctly into specified areas on preprinted forms.

Routing/Transit Field: Positions 33 through 43 of the MICR line used for the routing number bracketed on both sides by Transit Symbols.

Routing/Transit Number: Numeric identifier of a particular financial institution printed in the routing field on checks.

Routing/Transit Symbol: Special MICR character used exclusively in the routing/transit field.

Safety Paper: Highly calendered bond paper having a surface design and/or hidden warning indicator to identify any attempt at fraudulent alteration.

Serial Number: Often used to refer to the sequential check or document number found in the auxiliary on-us field of business checks and the on-us field of personal checks.

Signal Level/Strength: Amplitude of the voltage wave form produced when a DC magnetized MICR character is scanned by a magnetic reading head.

SIMM: Single Inline Memory Modules are small integrated circuit boards used to add memory to computers/printers and fonts to printers.

Skew: Amount of variation from vertical edge of a MICR character with respect to the bottom edge of the document, measured in degrees.

Solid Printing: Process that applies a solid color to a piece of paper.

Spacing: Fixed spaced fonts have constant inter-character spacing while proportionally spaced fonts vary with the shape of the character.

Stroke Weight: Description of the thickness of the strokes that compose characters in a font such as bold, medium, and light.

Style: Angularity of the characters in a font such as upright and italic.

Symbol: E-13B character separating the fields or separating digits within a field. The four E-13B symbols are amount, on-us, transit, and dash.

Symbol Set: Unique collection and ordering of all the characters available in a font designed for a specific type of application.

Trailing Edge: Left edge of a check when viewed from the face.

Transit Number: Unique identifying number assigned by the ABA to each US bank that appears in the upper right-hand corner of checks as the numerator (upper portion) of a fraction.

Transit Number Field: See Routing Field.

Typeface: Unique name that identifies the set of physical and conceptual characteristics on which a font's design is based.

ValuePort: microMICR's versatile font device that attaches to the laser printer.

Void: Absence of ink or toner within the specified outline of a printed MICR character.

Void Pantograph: Pantograph that produces the word "void" or other warning when a copy of the original check is made.

Waveshape: MICR character's unique magnetic footprint composed of the peaks and valleys of the magnetic wave form produced when the character is scanned by a magnetic reading head.

Write Head: Device in readers/sorters that magnetizes the ink printed in the clear band area of a MICR document.

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