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Glossary

PDF terms, in plain English

18 terms, each defined in a sentence you could read aloud, then explained properly.

PDF vocabulary gets in the way at exactly the wrong moments — when a portal rejects your file for a reason it will not explain, or a colleague asks whether you redacted something or only covered it. Most of these words describe one specific thing, and knowing which one turns a vague problem into a fixable one.

Each term below is defined in a single sentence first, then explained in terms of what it changes about a real document: what you would see, how to check it in your own file, and what it costs you if you get it wrong.

C

2

D

1

DPI How many pixels each inch of a page becomes when it is scanned or rendered as an image. 300 DPI is the print standard.

E

1

Embedded fonts Copies of the typefaces a PDF uses, stored inside the file so it looks the same on a device that does not have them.

F

1

Flattening a PDF Drawing a PDF’s form fields, comments and stamps into the page itself, so they look the same but can no longer be clicked, edited or removed.

L

1

Lossy compression Shrinking an image by throwing away detail the eye is unlikely to miss. Lossless compression shrinks without discarding anything.

O

2

P

6

R

1

Redaction Removing text from a PDF and covering the space it left, so the words cannot be read, copied or searched afterwards.

T

1

Text layer The characters stored in a PDF alongside the page image, making the words selectable, searchable and convertible.

U

1

User password The password a PDF asks for before it will show you anything. Without it the content stays encrypted and unreadable.

X

1

XMP An XML block of metadata embedded in a PDF, often repeating the document fields and adding a history of the software that edited it.