Typography

Member lesson

Point size, em, en and measurement

Lesson 20 of 34 in Typography.

Typography: Units of Typographic Measurement · Brett Erickson
Lesson

Point size does not measure the letters. It measures the body they sit on, which is a leftover from metal type where the body was a physical block of lead, and the letter occupied part of it.

46px34px25px19px14pxratio 1.33 · six steps, not fourteen
A modular type scale, each step multiplied by a fixed ratio.
Two equal-height metal type blocks, one with a small rounded shape and one with a large one, each printing a mark of a different size.
Two metal blocks of the same height carry letters of different sizes. Point size measures the block, so two fonts at the same size can look quite different.
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  1. Question 1, locked

    Which of these words means this? “The traditional unit of type size. About 0.353mm in the modern digital definition.”

    • Foundry
    • Subsetting
    • TrueType and PostScript outlines
    • Point
  2. Question 2, locked

    Which of these words means this? “A square the size of the type. A relative unit, so it scales.”

    • Hinting
    • Em
    • Rasterisation
    • Registered axis
  3. Question 3, locked

    Which of these words means this? “Twelve points. Used for measures and column widths.”

    • Pica
    • Typeface
    • Revival
    • Tell

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