Type Size
type size
[′tīp ‚sīz] (graphic arts)
For any font, the distance from the top of the tallest character to the bottom of the lowest character.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.
Type Size
(Russian, kegel’), the size of printing type, including the face and shoulders—the spaces above and below the face, forming the intervals between lines of the text in a printed book or newspaper. Type size is measured by points (a point is 0.376 mm) or squares (48 points).
Type sizes used in the USSR are (in points) 5, 6 (nonpareil), 7, 8 (brevier), 9 (bourgeois), 10 (long primer), 12 (cicero), 14, 16, 20, 24, 28, and 36 and (in squares) 1, 1¼, 1½, 2, 2½, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 15. The main text of the articles in the Bol’shaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia (3rd ed.) is set in seven-point type, the encyclopedia font especially created by Kudriashev.
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.