Cut & Paste
Beware of cutting and pasting between packages, as this method of moving graphics is not the best when final output is to be imageset, as the graphics are converted to Windows Metafiles which do not always reproduce well on an imagesetter. Save it as a file somewhere and then use the INSERT or PLACE command to put it into the program, it does cause problems and unnecessary time spent on workarounds for this.

Dot Dot Dot
You know those dots that get used for expression in a paragraph... they have a name. Called an "ellipsis" it is actually a character in it's own right (Alt-0133). If your package doesn't support it, use three full stops even though the spacing will be slightly different. But remember THREE dots, no more and no less and definitely no full stop after the event.

Email
While email is great for quick notes and small files to come through, it's not terribly useful for large documents as sending an attachment, the attachment gets converted to ASCII characters, which ends up enlarging the email by 2 or 3 times! So this large file now has to get sent to your server, then passed onto the recipient's server, then sent onto them.
So if you are dealing with a file that took a few minutes to send, don't expect it to get there in a few minutes, it will most likely be a lot longer.
And depending on which ISP you are with, a certain ISP has decided to trim email attachments if they are larger than 5mb, which serves no purpose as it's going to be corrupt when sent, therefore being a waste of time and bandwith for both parties. Not very iintelligent.

Layout
When working on a book, or a document that has a front and a back, remember that due to folding and collating, the front will appear on the right, and the back will be on the left as the fold is in the middle. When working on a booklet, number your pages as this helps later on when imposing the document.

Margins
With A4 letterheads and DL With Comp Slips try and keep a 10mm margin from the edges. For A5 flyers use about 8mm, and for business cards use the standard 4mm.

Resolution
The resolution (or dpi - Dots Per Inch) can often be confusing, as what one program might say about a file, might not be the actual output size. When looking at a file, first examine the file size to determine if it's going to have any decent content in it.
For example, while looking at a 72dpi graphic that is 40cm wide, when you make this 10cm wide the resolution mathematically works out (and you'll see it change when changing proportions in a program like Adobe Photoshop) to be roughly 300dpi... this graphic is now of high quality resolution for a business card.

Scanning
An often asked question is what RESOLUTION to set. Using a resolution higher than required gives you nothing but a big file! We recommend scanning at 1.5 times the screen ruling for B&W pics (say 150-200dpi) and 2 times for colour (at least 300dpi at the correct size). Most modern scanning programs let you choose a resolution to scan to, and then set the scaling percentage for each individual scan.
So if you have a number of photos to scan for a job all you need to is multiply the screen ruling by the 1.5 or 2 factor, set this resolution into the scanning program and adjust the scaling up or down for each scan. This way all your pics will come in to your page layout program at the right size and you won't have to push calculator buttons for each scan!

Straight Lines
Don't anyone laugh, we all need to learn once! To get straight lines in almost all programs is done by holding either the shift or control key (experiment!) This also applies to resizing graphics in many packages. The shift or control key will lock a graphic to its correct proportions when resizing (on some packages it will fix it even if you previously distorted it!)