What is meant by the term x-height How does this effect how type is read show examples of different x-heights among typefaces?
As the x-height increases, the length of the ascenders and descenders decreases. Typefaces with large x-heights also take up more real estate than those with small x-heights. For example, in any given measure, about 10 percent more copy can be set using a typeface like Perpetua than one like ITC Legacy Serif.
What does 12 pt mean?
Font sizes are measured in points; 1 point (abbreviated pt) is equal to 1/72 of an inch. The point size refers to the height of a character. Thus, a 12-pt font is 1/6 inch in height.
What are x-height letters?
In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lower-case letters in a typeface. One of the most important dimensions of a font, x-height is used to define how high lower-case letters without ascenders are compared to the cap height of upper-case letters.
How does an ascender affect the readability of a letter?
For example, any letter with an Ascender or Decender is easily recognizable when skimming over Mixed Case type, but if all letters are at or near the same heights (as they are in All Caps) they are more difficult to distinguish. All-capital print greatly retards speed of reading in comparison with lower-case type.
How does a taller x height improve readability?
A taller x-height (relative to the point size) improves readability at small sizes since it opens the counters (the holes in characters like ‘o’ and ‘e’). That’s what makes Verdana so terrific at small sizes (especially on screen with the great hinting it has).
Why do some letters exceed the x height?
(Curved letters such as a, c, e, m, n, o, r, s, and u tend to exceed the x-height slightly, due to overshoot, i has a dot that tends to go above x-height.) One of the most important dimensions of a font, x-height is used to define how high lower-case letters without ascenders are compared to the cap height of upper-case letters.
Why do some fonts have a large x height?
Text typefaces that incorporate large x-heights generally do so in an attempt to increase legibility and readability. The Spartan Classified font, which is designed to be legible at very small sizes, has a much larger x-height than the Futura typeface it was patterned after, which was intended for text composition within a normal point-size range.