CJKV Information Processing, 2nd Edition

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Chapter 7: Typography

The DTP point

e DTP point (or simply “point”) is the most commonly used typographic unit today,

at least for American and British systems. e point is usually considered to be ⁄ of

one inch, which also means 0.3515 millimeters, 0.01383 inches, or ⁄ of one pica.

*

To

be exact, there are 72.27 points per inch—the result of the mathematical operation 12 ÷

0.166044 (the number of points per pica divided by the length of one pica in inches).

Some applications allow the user to alter the denition of the point. QuarkXPress, for

example, allows the user to change the denition of a point—the default is 72 points per

inch according to the PostScript imaging model. is is useful if you have been using a

dierent typographic scale and want to stick with it.

The Didot point

e Didot point is still sometimes used in continental Europe, and is approximately 7%

larger than the DTP point. It represents 0.37597 millimeters, 0.01483 inches, or ⁄ of one

cicero. e cicero is similar to a pica, but like the DTP versus Didot point, it is approxi-

mately 7% larger than the pica.

Other Typographic Units

e two types of points are Western typographic units, but surely there must be typo-

graphic units developed in non-Western cultures. Indeed there are, and three other ty-

pographic units are still used in some proprietary typesetting systems in CJKV locales,

written as ...