Point (typography)

Point, in typography, may also refer to a dot grapheme (e.g.: full stop; Interpunct) as in the expression, decimal point. For non-typographical uses, see point.

In typography, a point is the smallest unit of measure, being a subdivision of the larger pica. It is commonly abbreviated as pt. The traditional printer's point, from the era of hot metal typesetting and presswork, varied between 0.18 and 0.4 mm depending on various definitions of the foot.

Today, the traditional point has been supplanted by the desktop publishing point (also called the PostScript point), which has been rounded to an even 72 points to the inch (1 point = 127⁄360 mm ≈ 0.353 mm). In either system, there are 12 points to the pica.

French printer’s points

See French units of measurement for the definitions of the units used in this section.

A French law of 1799 defined the meter to be exactly 443.296 French lines—or 3 French feet, 0 French inches and 11.296 French lines. Since the meter is now the standard unit, this implicitly defines the Pied du Roi, or French Royal foot, as exactly 9,000⁄27,706 meters (about 0.325 m). This value is used in the conversions below.

Truchet

The modern typographic point was invented in France by the clergyman Sébastien Truchet (1657–1729). The size he chose was such that 1728 of these made one Pied du Roi— using the 1799 definition, 15,625⁄83,118 mm (or about 0.188 mm).

Fournier

Pierre Simon Fournier (1712–1768) used a typographic point of about 11⁄864 French Royal inches ≈ 0.345 mm. Fournier’s point did not achieve lasting popularity.

Didot

François-Ambroise Didot (1730–1801) returned to Truchet’s idea, but chose a size twice as large. Thus 864 of his points made one Pied du Roi—that is, 15,625⁄41,559 mm ≈ 0.376 mm.

This value—somewhat odd due to the divisor, which has the prime factorization 3 × 7 × 1979—was not very flexible for use by typesetters and printers. Though the general size of the Didot point continued to be preferred to that of Truchet, several other printers each chose his or her own value for the point. These are compared below:

• 376.065 µm (0.0249% larger than Didot's point)—the traditional value in European printers' offices
• 376.000 µm (0.0076% larger)—used by Hermann Berthold (1831–1904) and many others
• 375.940 µm (0.0084% smaller)—Jan Tschichold (1902–1974), who used 266 points in 100 mm
• 375.000 µm (0.2584% smaller)—proposed in 1975, but hardly adopted

Note that the French National Print Office adopted a point of 400 µm exactly, and continues to use this measurement today.

The Didot point has been replaced by the DTP point in France and throughout the world.

Traditional American point system

By the (Kasson) Metric Act of 1866 (Public Law 39-183), the US (survey) foot is 1200⁄3937 m. This is 0.0002% more than 304.8 mm, which is the length of the Anglo-Saxon compromise foot of 1959, used below. A typographic foot contains 72 picas or 864 points.

• Nelson C. Hawks, in 1879, used a printer’s foot of an Anglo-Saxon foot decreased by 0.375%. Therefore, the traditional ratio 7200⁄7227 (which reduces to 800⁄803) places Hawks’ point at 0.013 837 inch, or about 351.46 µm.
• A second definition was proposed whereby there were exactly 996 printer’s points (= 83 picas) in 350 mm, which made the printer’s point about 0.013 848 867 inch ≈ 351.405 622 µm.
• Finally, Lawrence Johnson stated in a third definition of printer’s foot that it should be 249⁄250 (99.6%) English foot. This means that the Johnson’s typographical point was 0.01383 inch, and was then converted by the 1959 value to 351.36 µm.

In 1886, the Fifteenth Meeting of the Type Founders Association of the United States approved the so-called Johnson pica be adopted as the official standard. This makes the traditional American printer’s foot measure 11.952 inches (303.6 mm), or 303.5808 mm exactly, giving a point size of approximately 1⁄72.27 of an inch, or 351.5 µm.

This is the size of the point in the TeX computer typesetting system by Donald Knuth, which predates Postscript slightly. Thus the latter unit is commonly called the TeX point.

Like the French Didot point, the traditional American printer’s point was replaced in the 1980s by the current computer-based DTP point system.

Current DTP point system

The desktop publishing point (DTP point) is defined as 1/72 of the Anglo-Saxon compromise inch of 1959 (25.4 mm), it is approximately 0.0139 inch or 352.8 µm. Twelve points make up a pica, and six picas make an inch.

The point is the usual unit for measuring font size and leading and other minute items on a printed page. This system was notably promoted by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, the inventors of Adobe PostScript, and therefore it is sometimes also called PostScript point.

In metal type, the point size of the font described the size (height) of the metal body on which the typeface's characters were cast. In digital type, the body is now an imaginary design space, but is used as the basis from which the type is scaled (see em).

A measurement in picas is usually represented by placing a lower case p after the number, such as "10p" means "10 picas". Points are represented by placing the number of points after the p, such as 0p5 for "5 points," 6p2 for "6 picas and 2 points", or 1p1 for "13 points" which is converted to a mixed fraction of 1 pica and 1 point. (An alternate nomenclature is described in the pica article.)

Traditional point-size names

The following names were often used for the point sizes usually available for letterpress printing:

6 pt: non­pareil
7 pt: min­ion
8 pt: brevier or small text
9 pt: bour­geois or Gal­liard
10 pt: long primer or Gara­mond (c.f. Garamond)
11 pt: small pica or philo­sophy
12 pt: pica
14 pt: Eng­lish or Augustin
18 pt: great primer
21 pt: double small pica
24 pt: double pica or two-line pica
36 pt: double great primer or two-line great primer
48 pt: four picas 72 pt: inch

Correspondence to Chinese font sizes

In China, point size is not used much; instead the following Chinese size names are used (e.g. in the Chinese version of Microsoft Word):

Chinese size name	Translation	Equivalent point size
chū (初)	"initial"	42 points
xiǎochū (小初)	"small initial"	36 points
yī (一)	"one"	28 points
èr (二)	"two"	21 points
xiǎo'èr (小二)	"small two"	18 points
sān (三)	"three"	15.75 points
sì (四)	"four"	14 points
xiǎosì (小四)	"small four"	12 points
wǔ (五)	"five"	10.5 points
xiǎowǔ (小五)	"small five"	9 points
liù (六)	"six"	7.875 points
qī (七)	"seven"	5.25 points

The syllable 号 (hào, "size") is appended to the Chinese name when it is not obvious that a font size is being referred to.

See also

• Pica (unit of measure)

External links

• www.sizes.com: Printing type
• More on the story of the typographical point