point sizes?

  • Thread starter Thread starter JethroUK©
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JethroUK©

if a font is measured in point sizes and a character is taller than it is
wide
does the point size reflect the width or the height?

and what proportion is the other dimension?

e.g. if this character "A" is in font size 10

assuming it's 10 points high, is it 10*.8 wide (8 points)

assuming it's 10 points wide, is it 10*1.2 high (12 points)

hope you get my drift
 
From what I understand, point size is height and there isn't a direct
proportion of height to width. For example:

Which letter is taller (W, T)? Both are the same!

Which letter is wider (W, T)? Kind of obvious.

Also, there are 72 points to an inch.

Hope this helps!

Bill Foley
www.pttinc.com
 
that's a start thanx


PTT said:
From what I understand, point size is height and there isn't a direct
proportion of height to width. For example:

Which letter is taller (W, T)? Both are the same!

Which letter is wider (W, T)? Kind of obvious.

Also, there are 72 points to an inch.

Hope this helps!

Bill Foley
www.pttinc.com
Click to expand...
 
But note that the point size is not the height of any given letter. It is
the distance from the top of the tallest ascender to the bottom of the
longest descender. Moreover, Word's default paragraph spacing allows the
amount of leading that is built into the font, which means that the distance
from the baseline of one line to the baseline of the next is larger than the
nominal point size.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
But note that the point size is not the height of any given letter. It is
the distance from the top of the tallest ascender to the bottom of the
longest descender.
Click to expand...

Actually, the point size of the font is strictly a nominal size. It is
slightly less meaningful than 2x4 lumber size. The distance from the
top of the tallest ascender to the bottom of the longest descender is
usually less than the nominal point size (e.g. TNR) but is sometimes
more than the nominal point size (e.g. Book Antiqua).

To see some of the differences in character height for the same
nominal size, type in a few "l" and "q" characters and set the line to
144 point Book Antiqua. Then try selecting one of each character and
changing the font, to TNR or Twentieth Century MT or Papyrus or some
other interesting font.


Bob S
 
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