Pitch (typewriter)

Pitch is the number of (monospaced) letters, numbers and spaces in one inch (25.4 mm) of running text, that is, characters per inch (cpi), measured horizontally.[1][2]

Overview

The pitch was most often used as a measurement of the size of typewriter fonts as well as those of impact printers used with computers.

The most widespread fonts in typewriters are 10 and 12 pitch, called Pica[a] and Elite, respectively.[1][2][3] Both fonts have the same x-height, yielding six lines per vertical inch.[3] There may be other font styles with various width: condensed or compressed (17–20 cpi), italic or bold (10 pitch), enlarged (5–8 cpi), and so on.

See also

  • Courier (typeface) – Monospaced slab serif typeface
  • Letter-spacing – Physical spacing of characters in text
  • Proportional spacing – A proportional typeface contains glyphs of varying widths, while a monospaced (non-proportional or fixed-width) typeface uses a single standard width for all glyphs in the font. Consequently, the pitch of a proportionally spaced font is undefined.
  • Traditional point-size names

Notes

  1. ^ Pica, the typewriter font, should not be confused with pica (typography), a unit equal to 1⁄6 of an inch or twelve points, usually measured vertically

References

  1. ^ a b Fist, Stewart (1996). "Pitch". The Informatics Handbook: A guide to multimedia communications and broadcasting. p. 512.
  2. ^ a b Saigh, Robert A. (1998). "Pitch". The International Dictionary of Data Communications. p. 204.
  3. ^ a b Fenna, Donald (2002). A Dictionary of Weights, Measures, and Units. Oxford Uiniversity Press. pp. 76, 219. ISBN 9780198605225.
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