![]() ![]() ![]() In all-caps text, lining figures look better, too, as old-style figures seem just as if you’d mixed in lowercase letters. When to use lining figures: In tables and charts, and anywhere people need to take in numbers at a glance for financial or statistical purposes. When to use old-style figures: In the middle of mixed-case typing, where there are relatively few numbers and they don’t need to line up. How to apply old-style figures: You can either select a range or select all the text in your document and use the Number Case section of the Typography menu: choose Old-Style Figures. They eventually came roaring back when fonts could contain arbitrarily large amounts of glyphs. Old-style figures became hard to find in the transition from metal to phototype and then into digital, because of the complexity of including them in limited fonts, and accessing them on dedicated typesetting hardware and early desktop-publishing software. (There were and are old-style figures that are monospaced, too, but they seem fussy and aren’t as legible for scanning numbers.) IDGĬolumns of numbers are far easier to parse with lining figures with monospacing (top) than old-style figures with proportional spacing (bottom). Thus came “lining” figures, which each take an equal amount of space to line up (monospaced) and which are all “uppercase,” occupying the same distance from the baseline to cap height. When you start using a lot of numbers for financial and statistical data, they need to line up to be understandable, otherwise your eye running down a column might mistake the 1,000s column in one line for the 10,000s in another. These are now known as “old-style” figures. The zero was a circle, like an o, though distinct an 8 had its top bowl up at cap height the 4 dipped its leg below the baseline. ![]() Old-style figures (and small caps for acronyms) fit the flow and “color” of text better (left) than lining figures.įigures were designed originally to fit into text-like letters, and had a sort of lowercase look about them. The ascender is often slightly higher than the cap height, and it’s where the “ascenders” or long vertical strokes of lowercase letters, top out at as in f, h, and l.The cap height is where the top of capital letters reach.The x-height is a mid-point, the height of the lowercase letter x and roughly the top of most lowercase letters or their bowls (the rounded part of b, d, and h, for instance).Descenders drop below that baseline, as in p, q, and y, to a common point.The baseline is where capital or uppercase letters “sit,” as well as the bottom of most lowercase or small letters and numbers.Type appears on an invisible set of what are typically five horizontal lines: That requires a little unpacking (see figure above). Lining figures versus old-style figuresīefore charts and tables were common, nearly all numerals-called “figures” in typography-were upper-and-lower case and proportional. Various kinds of letters and figures in typefaces are drawn against invisible lines, with curves dropping a little below and above them to correct for perception. In others, you can select your entire text run or make the change before you start typing to affect what follows-that’s useful if you want to use old-style figures throughout a document, as that setting only affects the digits zero through nine. In some cases, you will want to select individual characters or small ranges, for instance to apply small caps (see below). Make a change to any setting in the palette applies to the range. The Typography items are all based on the current selection of text. However, nearly any app in macOS that lets you use the Fonts selector (press Command-T to reveal or hide it) and select Typography from its gear menu in the upper-left corner should display the same results. The examples below rely on the later version of Pages for macOS. You can see all the glyphs in a font using Font Book, built into macOS. Use the Size field (upper-right corner) or slider (right side) to see the glyphs at a larger or smaller size. This reveals all the characters, including any alternative ones. Launch Applications > Font Book, click All Fonts in the upper-left corner, select the font you want to view, and then choose View > Repertoire. You can use macOS’s built-in Font Book app to see all the glyphs in installed fonts. P22 Type Foundry calls out OpenType features in some detail, as well as showing all glyphs in its fonts. ![]() But it also has an OpenType Features dropdown menu that appears if the typeface or particular font has any. P22 Type Foundry, for example, has a Glyphs tab for each font that lets you examine every character-known as a “glyph”-in each weight and style of its faces. Some font foundries provide even more insight. ![]()
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