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Pica (typography)

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Unit of length

Not to be confused withPica, the traditional name for 12-point type.

Pica
A ruler showingPica scale (on the top) andAgate scale (on the bottom)
General information
Unit system	Typographic unit
Unit of	Length
Conversions
1 picain ...	... is equal to ...

typographic units	12 points
imperial/US units	⁠1/6⁠ in
metric (SI) units	4.2333 mm

Thepica is atypographic unit of measure corresponding to approximately1⁄6 of aninch. One pica is further divided into 12points.

In printing, three pica measures are used:

TheFrench pica of 12Didot points (also calledcicero) generally is: 12 × 0.376 = 4.512 mm (0.1776 in).
TheAmerican pica of 0.16604 in (4.217 mm). It was established by the United States Type Founders' Association in 1886.^[1]^[2] InTeX one pica is400⁄2,409 of an inch.
The contemporarycomputer PostScript pica is exactly1⁄6 of an inch, i.e. 0.16 in or 4.23 mm.

Publishing applications such asAdobe InDesign andQuarkXPress represent pica measurements with whole-number picas left of a lower-casep, followed by the points number, for example: 5p6 represents 5 picas and 6 points, or 51⁄2 picas.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) defined by theWorld Wide Web Consortium usepc as the abbreviation for pica (1⁄6 of an inch), andpt for point (1⁄72 of an inch).^[3]

The pica is also used in measuring the font capacity and is applied in the process ofcopyfitting.^[4] The font length is measured there by the number ofcharacters per pica (cpp). As books are most often printed with proportional fonts, cpp of a given font is usually a fractional number. For example, an 11-point font (likeHelvetica) may have 2.4 cpp,^[5]^[6] thus a 5-inch (30-pica) line of a usual octavo-sized (6×8 in) book page would contain around 72 characters (including spaces).^[7]^[8]

There have existed copyfitting tables for a number of typefaces, and typefoundries often provided the number of characters per pica for each type in their specimen catalogs. Similar tables exist as well with which one can estimate the number of characters per pica knowing the lower-case alphabet length.^[9]

The typographic pica should not be confused with thePica font of the typewriters, which means a font where 10 typed characters make up a line one inch long.

References

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^Legros, Lucien Alphonse; Grant, John Cameron (1916).Typographical Printing-Surfaces. London and New York: Longmann, Green, and Co. pp. 57–60.ISBN 9785872323303.{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
^Hyde, Grant Milnor (1920).Newspaper Editing: A Manual for Editors, Copyreaders, and Students of Newspaper Desk Work. New York and London: D. Appleton and Company. pp. 226–227.
^"Syntax and basic data types". W3.org. Retrieved2016-10-21.
^Pipes, Alan (2005).Production for Graphic Designers (4th ed.). Laurence King Publishing. pp. 48–49.ISBN 9781856694582.
^Montagnes, Ian (1991).Editing and Publication: A Training Manual. p. 343.ISBN 9789712200090.
^Newsom, Doug; Haynes, Jim (2010).Public Relations Writing: Form & Style. Cengage Learning. pp. 392–395.ISBN 978-1-4390-8272-0.
^Dahl, Fred (2006).Book Production Procedures for Today's Technology (2nd ed.). Inkwell Publishing Service. p. 21.ISBN 9781929163212.
^Jackson, Hartley Everett (1942).Newspaper Typography, a Textbook for Journalism Classes. Stanford University Press. pp. 36–37.ISBN 9780804710831.{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
^Clair, Kate; Busic-Snyder, Cynthia (2012).A Typographic Workbook: A Primer to History, Techniques, and Artistry. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 101–104.ISBN 978-1-118-39988-0.

Bringhurst, Robert (1999).The Elements of Typographic Style (2nd ed.). H&M Publishers. pp. 294–295.ISBN 0881791326.
Pasko, W. W. (1894)."Pica".American Dictionary of Printing and Bookmaking. H. Lockwood. p. 436.

Typeface anatomy	Counter Diacritics Dingbat Glyph Ink trap Ligature Rotation Subscript and superscript Swash Text figures Tittle
Capitalization	All caps Camel case Initial Letter case Small caps Snake case Title case
Visual distinction	Blackboard bold Bold Color printing Italics Oblique Underline Whitespace
Horizontal aspects	Figure space Kerning Letter spacing Pitch Sentence spacing Thin space Word spacing
Vertical aspects	Ascender Baseline Body height Cap height Descender Mean line Overshoot x-height

Typeface
classifications

Roman type	Serif Antiqua Didone slab serif Sans-serif
Blackletter type	Fraktur Rotunda Schwabacher
Gaelic type	Insular Uncial
Specialist	Record type Display typeface script fat face reverse-contrast