Filter
Top Products
232
Appendix A: Understanding Fonts
Style refers to other typeface modifications, such as tilt or
character width. Italic and oblique are styles where the
characters are tilted. Narrow, condensed and extended are
three common styles that modify the character widths.
Some fonts combine several weight and style modifica-
tions; for example, Helvetica Narrow Bold Italic. A group
of several weight and style variations of a single typeface
is called a typeface family. Most typeface families have four
variations: regular, italic, bold, and bold italic. Some fami-
lies have more variations, as the following illustration for
the Helvetica typeface family shows:
Pitch and Point Size
The size of a font is specified as either a pitch or point size,
depending on whether the font is fixed space or propor-
tional.
In fixed space fonts, each character has the same width.
Pitch is used to specify the size of fixed space fonts. It is a
measure of the number of characters that will print in one
horizontal inch of type. For example, all 10-pitch fonts
print 10 characters per inch (cpi) and all 12-pitch fonts
print 12 cpi:
Courier 10 Pitch 1234567890
Courier-Bold 10 Pitch 1234567890
Courier 12 Pitch 123456789012
Courier-Bold 12 Pitch 123456789012
1inch