pitch vs point size (2000 SR1)

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Not related to Word, except we’re using Word — we are answering an RFP that requests 10-12 pitch font. How do you relate this to point size? I remember from typewriter (and Wang word processor) days that 12 pitch was smaller than 10 pitch — I think it related to characters per inch but I’m not sure. Does anyone have a way to do a conversion? Thanks.

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According to this glossary entry, pitch means “characters per inch.”

By trial and error with a fixed-pitch font such as Courier New, you can determine that 10 12-point characters fit into an inch horizontally, while 12 10-point characters fit into an inch horizontally. There are 72 points per inch, so those point measurements obviously do not refer to the horizontal direction.

I don’t know if that helps, but at least you get the same numbers: 10 or 12.

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Pitch was indeed used in the days of the typewriter. It is a useful measure for fixed-width fonts such as Courier New. Pitch is the number of characters per inch (horizontally). Higher pitch means more characters per inch, so the characters will most likely be smaller. A rule of thumb was pitch x point size = 120. So with 15 point size (for headers), you’d get 120/15 = 8 characters per inch, and with 10 point size, you’d get 120/10 = 12 characters per inch.

Nowadays, we mostly use proportional width fonts: an i takes up much less space than a w. Pitch is not a very useful measure anymore, but you can use the old rule of thumb, so 10-12 pitch would correspond to 10-12 point size.

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Thanks to both of you!

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Thanks to both of you!

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Pitch was indeed used in the days of the typewriter. It is a useful measure for fixed-width fonts such as Courier New. Pitch is the number of characters per inch (horizontally). Higher pitch means more characters per inch, so the characters will most likely be smaller. A rule of thumb was pitch x point size = 120. So with 15 point size (for headers), you’d get 120/15 = 8 characters per inch, and with 10 point size, you’d get 120/10 = 12 characters per inch.

Nowadays, we mostly use proportional width fonts: an i takes up much less space than a w. Pitch is not a very useful measure anymore, but you can use the old rule of thumb, so 10-12 pitch would correspond to 10-12 point size.

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