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Appendix A: Understanding Fonts
In proportional (or typographic) fonts, every character can
have a different width. Since proportional fonts have char-
acters with different widths, the font size is specified in
point size, not pitch. Point size refers to the height of the
characters in the font. A point is defined as 1/72 inch. The
characters in a font printed at 24 point will be twice as
largeasthecharactersinthesamefontprintedat12point.
The following illustration shows samples of a font printed
in different point sizes:
The point size of a font is defined as the distance from the
top of the tallest character in the font to the bottom of the
lowest character in the font. Due to the definition of point
size, different fonts printed at the same point size may
appear quite different in size. This is because there are
other font parameters that affect how the font looks. How-
ever, the point size of a font is an excellent specification of
the relative size of a font. The following examples illus-
trate two very different proportional fonts at 14 point:
ITC Avant Garde
abcdefghABCDEFGH
ITC Zapf Chancery
abcdefghABCDEFGH
48 point 36 point
24 point 18 point 12 point 10 point