Theohasbeen kerned Thefont height(24 points) is measured
closerto th- f. from ●scendertodescender.
I4
Afont is acomplete set of Ascender
-characters in aparticular Descender
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size and type[ ace. Baseline
Uu Proportional Swif
spacing
L;adingis tho
baselinetobaseline
m~asuremcnt.
3.1.3 Fontspacingand pitch
Youprobably first heard the wordpitch in connectionwith typewriters.
Typewntersnonnallyusemonospacedspacing:theygiveeachcharacterthe
sameamountof spaceon the line.
Abouthalfthefontsavailableforlaserprintersuse monospacedspacingtoo.
Pitchis always expressedas so many charactersper inch.Ten-pitch, for
example,meansafontwith ten charactersineach inchof the line.
Typesetter forcenturieshaveused two specialsizesof typefor mosttext.
EZitecharactersareIOpointshighand print12charactemperinch.Andpica
chararactersare 12points high and pitched at 10characters to the inch.
You’lloften run acrossthese monospacedfont sizesin the laser printing
world.
Ideallyeachcharacterinawordshouldnestleagainstitsneighbors so they
appearevenlyspaced.Butadjacentroundcharactersare aptto looktoo far
apafi,whileflat-sidedcharactersmay appeartoo close.
Proportionalspacingtakesinto accountthe differencesin widths among
letters(compareiiwithWW).Proportionallyspacedprintingiseasiertoread
thantypewriter-styleprintingin which all characters,includingpunctua-
tion,have thesame width.
Realtypesettersequipcertaincharactemwithkerns,letterpans thatextend
outto overlap adjoiningletters.In this word Type they is kernedclosely
againsttheT. Kerning separatesgreattypefrom goodtype.
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