Glossary
Typist Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential typist terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key typist vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in typist training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Dictation
- Spoken text to type.
- Formatting
- Layout and styles.
- Top and bottom text.
- Line spacing
- Space between lines.
- Mail merge
- Personalized bulk letters.
- Margins
- Page edges.
- Pagination
- Page numbering.
- Proofreading
- Checking for errors.
- Styles
- Reusable formatting.
- Table of contents
- List of sections.
- Template
- Reusable document.
- Track changes
- Showing edits.
- Transcription
- Typing recordings.
- Version control
- Tracking document versions.
- Word processing
- Creating documents on computers.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Typist practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Typist training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.