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'Winkle-bag printer' was the first specialist insult that I learned on joining the trade. It referred to a company producing poor quality work. Bags made of a thick and coarse paper were used for holding shellfish, often sold from street barrows, with the vendor's name printed crudely on the side.

Printing trade language has traditionally been robust. Compositors were called ‘galley slaves’ redolent of the type size approximating to 12-point and the act of lifting metal types from cases. Pressmen were less subtly derided as ‘horses’ or ‘pigs’. ‘Devil’ originally described the odd-job boy, but was later applied to craft apprentices.

Other quaint workshop language included ‘trotting’, meaning to lead a colleague up the garden path. ‘Nailing’ was to speak disparagingly about a fellow worker. Putting somebody ‘on the coach’ was to send them to Coventry. ‘GH’ was invoked to rebuke a companion for retailing stale news. ‘NF’ or ‘no fly’ was applied to a colleague who heard or saw something intended to unsettle him, but elected to ignore it.

With computerisation, the informal language of the printing industry has been sanitised to a considerable degree, though I suppose oaths of a contemporary nature could be summoned. One might wish an antagonist ‘an outbreak of ROM rot’, or a ‘plague of viruses on software’, or a ‘network collision of massive proportions’. On the other hand, a ‘purloined mobile phone’ might give me more peace.

Lawrence Wallis held international pre-press marketing positions and was a respected author and print historian.