Reply To: Is bleed required in all cases

There's a lot of movement when the paper is fed into a printing machine (see picture below). It is then stacked on the other side of the printing machine and again it might not be aligned exactly on top of each other.

Eugene, nice picture! Brings back MEMORIES OF HAVING TO TALK QUITE LOUD, EH?

Usually, sheets like these are printed double-sided, and registration marks ensure both sides aren't off by anything more than the width of a registration mark (typically, that would be around 0.1 mm). Although it's a pure mechanical process with, indeed, a lot of moving parts (and moving extremely fast, at that), the pressman has full control over the lateral movement of each sheet. Under ideal circumstances, a client would never see misaligned text.

The same goes for cutting; the biggest danger is of trying to cut a large stack at a single go, because then it's possible the entire stack shifts when the knife goes down. But that should be an exception, honestly.