Font schemes apportioned in quantities like the foregoing are more or less closely adhered to for original packages of foundry-cast type. To insure precision, when ordering, it is necessary to state not only the quantity (by number of letters or weight) but also whether a complete font or part of a complete font (capital font, lower-case font, or figure font) is referred to.
The Sizes of Type
All printing type has, first, a name denoting its size, and second, one denoting the style of its face. For instance, the type used for the text of this book is 10-point (its size) Lining Caslon Oldstyle (the foundry name of its face).
The size of a type is the vertical thickness of its body—the thickness of a line up and down the page. The width of a type is its set. Thus a 12-point en-quad is 12-point body and 6-point set, a 10-point figure of the thickness of an en quad is 10-point body and 5-point set, etc. The total length of a type, including feet and face, is its height-to-paper.
American type sizes conform to a graduated scale known as the point system. The unit of the system is a division of space called a point, which is .0138+ (approximately 1⁄72) of an inch. Type bodies are multiples of this point.
The usual sizes are graduated by points up to 12-point. Sizes above 18-point are multiples of 6-point up to 60-point (18, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48, 54, 60). Larger sizes are 72-point, 84-point (rare), 96-point, 120-point, and 144-point, the latter being the largest type commonly cast in a mold.
