Proportional font
As a proportional font , including proportional fonts are fonts designated in which each character occupies the width that it requires optically. They are in contrast to non-proportional fonts , also called fixed-width fonts, in which all characters are the same width.
description
Proportional fonts are generally more pleasant than fixed-width fonts, as the letters only get the space they need from their basic shape, and particularly narrow or wide letters such as an I or M are not "forcibly" stretched or compressed.
The proportional font is predominantly used again today after computers have long since taken over the role of the typewriter , which, apart from a few models, worked with a fixed-width font. Program source texts in text editor programs and similar technical applications, in which all numerals must be the same width, are an exception . Most typographical rules only make sense when using proportional fonts.
definition
All fonts with a variable pitch count as proportional font. These include, for example, the computer fonts Arial and Times New Roman . In proportional font, the distance from the end of a letter to the beginning of the following letter or character is identical.
literature
- Torsten Stapelkamp: Information visualization . Web - print - signage. Successful information design: control systems, knowledge transfer and information architecture. Springer Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-642-02076-6 , pp. 221 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ List of available fonts. (No longer available online.) Microsoft, archived from the original on September 6, 2014 ; Retrieved September 6, 2014 (Proportional fonts consider how the shape of the characters affects the visual appearance when the characters are combined.).
- ↑ Lutz Hering, Heike Hering: Technical Reports. Organize understandably, design well, present convincingly. Vieweg & Teubner, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-8348-1586-6 . P. 267.