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Narrow condensed faces used to be called “compressed”. They cram about
five characters in the space where three usually go- ideal for spreadsheets.
An extended face, particularly on a dot-matrix printer, goes by several
names: “expanded,
” “enlarged” or “double-width” printing. No matter what
it’s called, extended print is wider than it is high, and can be fairly effective
in page headings.
Italic characters (sometimes called “oblique”) are slanted. Ordinary upright
characters are often called “reman”. Your Star LaserPrinter 8 comes with a
built-in upright Courier typeface. Moreover, from any of the Star Laser-
Printer 8’s built-in typefaces you can select a subset of upright symbols
called Roman-8.
A font is a complete set of characters in a particular size and typeface. In the
world of laser printers, the three variables mentioned above- weight, width
and style- are a few font attributes (sometimes called “font characteris-
tics”). Let’s consider three more attributes: font height, spacing and pitch.
Font height
The baseline is the invisible line upon which characters of type sit. Since the
first letter blocks were made of lead alloy, the distance from one baseline to
the next is called leading (pronounced “ledding”). Type itself is measured
from the top of an ascender (the part extending up in the b or k , for example)
to the bottom of a descender (the down-stroke of the y or (7 ).
The measurements used to describe fonts arepoints and picas (derived from
the marks and letters in medieval church almanacs). There are 12 points to
the pica, and almost exactly 6 picas (72 points) to the inch. Your Star
Laser-Printer 8 quite handily prints type from 6 to 36 points in size.
Laser printers for computers measurefont height in points. On laser printers
the “white space” above ascenders and below descenders depends on how
the fine is defined, so the line corresponds to leading. This type you’re
reading has a font height of 12 points, and is spaced a little less than 5 lines
per inch.
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