CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition

Typographic Units and Measurements

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477

Historical names for type sizesTable 7-1.

Name Size in points

English 14

Great primer 16

Paragon 18

Two-line small pica 22

Two-line pica 24

Two-line English 28

Two-line great primer 32

Three-line pica 36

Four-line pica 48

Four-line English 56

Five-line pica 60

Six-line pica 72

In case you haven’t gured it out yet, this is the origin of the typographic term a.

“ruby” that was introduced in Chapter 6. Remember that ruby glyphs are typically

set at half the size of their parent glyphs. Its corresponding point size, specically 5

points, is half the size of a common text size, specically the elite at 10 points.

Some of these historical names are still in use today, such as pica. Some of them are used

in somewhat specic contexts, such as ruby, which has seemingly lost its absolute type

size attribute, and instead is used for its relative type size. Because most typographic units

of measurement have long and sometimes misunderstood histories, such discussions are

obviously beyond the scope of this book. As previously written, what is important in the

context of this book is to know that there are many typographic units, and that you can

convert between them.

Two Important Points—Literally

Quite literally, there are two types of points used in typography today. e point is a

unit of measurement used to specify the size of characters, and also for ...