specifications. You can also use pitch size to integrate different kinds
of text into a printed page. The following are descriptions of the
available draft-quality pitch sizes.
Pica pitch
As we have said, pica printing yields 10 characters per inch and
80 characters per line. Pica is commonly used in business letters,
thesis papers, reports, -and in general, wherever it’s important that
your document be easy to read or scan.
The pica pitch is the default setting in the draft mode, but you can
change the default to elite, either by turning off DIP switch 1-6 or
by sending the correct codes to the printer. We’ll show you how to
do this in a moment, but first, take a look at what draft-quality pica
printing looks like using all the “accent” features available with your
printer:
SUBJECT: ORDERING STATIONERY SUPPLIES
I would like to place an order for stationery
supplies from your mail order catalog.
Enclosed is my order form and a check f-or $247.
Please process th-is order as soon as possible.
Thank you.
Figure 4-6. Pica printing in the draft mode.
If you use either the elite pitch or the condensed pitch and wish
to return to pica, you can reactivate this setting in one of two ways:
aTurn on DIP switch 1-6 (if you had previously turned it off), or
*Enter the following codes through your word processor:
Table 4-6. The codes used to activate pica printing.
ESCAPE CODE DECIMAL CODE HEXADECIMAL CODE
<ESC>P 27 80 1B 50
Elite pitch
As we mentioned earlier in the manual, the elite setting will print
12 characters per inch and 96 characters per line. Elite is often used
for longer documents, but it’s also found in formal and informal
correspondence, and has many other uses as well. Though you
may not notice much difference between the elite and pica pitches,
elite allows you to fit more text on the page.