#Pica definition typography plus

: 143 The Didot system prevailed because the French government demanded printing in Didot measurements. To avoid confusion between the new and the old sizes, Didot also rejected the traditional names, thus parisienne became corps 5, nonpareille became corps 6, and so on. However, 12 Fournier points turned out to be 11 Didot points, : 142–145 giving a Fournier point of about 0.345 mm later sources : 60–61 state it as being 0.348 75 mm. Accordingly, one Didot point is exactly two Truchet points. He did not change the subdivisions (1 inch = 12 subdivisions = 72 points), but defined it strictly in terms of the royal foot, a legal length measure in France: the Didot point is exactly 1⁄ 864 of a French foot or 1⁄ 72 of a French inch, that is (by 1799) 15 625⁄ 41 559 mm or about 0.375 972 mm. The Didot point, established by François-Ambroise Didot in 1783, was an attempt to improve the Fournier system. : 66 In Belgium, the Fournier system was used until the 1970s and later. It was still a standard in Belgium, in parts of Austria, and in Northern France at the beginning of the 20th century. The Fournier point did not achieve lasting popularity despite being revived by the Monotype Corporation in 1927. The Fournier scale: two inches in total, divided into four half-inches, the medium intervals are one line ( 1⁄ 12 inch), and the smallest intervals are 1⁄ 36 inch no intervals for the point is given, thoughįournier printed a reference scale of 144 points over two inches however, it was too rough to accurately measure a single point. One Fournier point is about 0.0135 English inches. With the usual convention that 1 foot equals 12 inches, 1 inch ( pouce) was divided into 12 lines ( lignes) and 1 line was further divided into 6 typographic points ( points typographiques). : 60–66 The system of Fournier was based on a different French foot of c. The Fournier point was established by Pierre Simon Fournier in 1737. It has also been cited as exactly 0.188 mm. The Truchet point therefore became equal to 15 625⁄ 83 118 mm or about 0.187 986 mm. This established a length to the royal foot of 9000⁄ 27 706 m or about 325 mm. It was invented by the French clergyman Sébastien Truchet.ĭuring the metrication of France amid its revolution, a 1799 law declared the meter to be exactly 443.296 French lines long. The Truchet point, the first modern typographic point, was 1⁄ 144 of a French inch or 1⁄ 1728 of the royal foot. See also: Units of measurement in France for the units used in this section, particularly those used before the French Revolution. Traditional continental European points at about 0.375 mm are usually a bit larger than English points at around 0.350 mm. There have been many definitions of a 'point' since the advent of typography.

Varying standards Various point definitions 14pt (12 points would be '12pt' or '1pc' since it is the same as 1 pica)-format used by Cascading Style Sheets defined by the World Wide Web Consortium.1p2 (12 points would be just '1p')-format for desktop.1P⁄ 2p (12 points would be just ' 1P⁄ ')-traditional style.

#Pica definition typography plus

For example, 14 points (1 pica plus 2 points) can be written: Notations Ī measurement in points can be represented in three different ways. The construction of the alphabet is the first based on logical measurement called 'Punto,' which corresponds to the ninth part of the height of the letters or the thickness of the principal stroke. The point was first established by the Milanese typographer, Francesco Torniella da Novara ( c. Although the letters of a font usually fit within the font's em square, there is not necessarily any size relationship between the two, so the point size does not necessarily correspond to any measurement of the size of the letters on the printed page. When a point size of a font is specified, the font is scaled so that its em square has a side length of that particular length in points. In digital type, letters of a font are designed around an imaginary space called an em square. In metal type, the point size of the font describes the height of the metal body on which the typeface's characters were cast. The DTP point is defined as 1⁄ 72 of an international inch ( 1 / 72 × 25.4 mm ≈ 0.353 mm) and, as with earlier American point sizes, is considered to be 1⁄ 12 of a pica. Following the advent of desktop publishing in the 1980s and 1990s, digital printing has largely supplanted the letterpress printing and has established the desktop publishing ( DTP) point as the de facto standard. Since the 18th century, the size of a point has been between 0.18 and 0.4 millimeters.

The size of the point has varied throughout printing's history. It is used for measuring font size, leading, and other items on a printed page. In typography, the point is the smallest unit of measure. A ruler showing point scale (on the bottom) and inch scale (on the top)