[BUG] Confused about font sizes

Henrik Gedenryd Henrik.Gedenryd at lucs.lu.se
Sat Feb 3 10:03:19 UTC 2001


David N. Smith (IBM) wrote:

> What are the right sizes, and why aren't they the same everywhere?
> 
> Dave

Strictly, 10, 12, 18, 24 are the right sizes. (However these are for 72 dpi
screens, as there are roughly 72 points-not pixels-per inch. The Windows
standard is 96 dpi.) The point size is set by the font designer, it has
nothing to do with the physical (pixel or other) size. Try putting up the
same (large) size of say, Helvetica, Times and Palatino and see how
different they are in size.

This tends to confuse people a lot. However, there is no good measure that
"captures" the size well. If anything, the physical size to care about
should be the "x height" i.e. the height of a lower case letter without
stems, as this is the best measure of how large the type is perceived to be.

Henrik






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