How many points in an inch of type?

Answer 1

You need to make capital letters an inch high, and you need to know the point size, correct? The answer is, it depends on the font.Look at these three letters:

Wxy

There are two measurements most type has: point size and x-height. Point size, in our example, is from the top of the W to the bottom of the descender of the y. x-height is what it sounds like. Some fonts, like Machine, don't have minuscule letters so there's no x-height for them.

In other words, a 72-point capital letter won't be an inch high because that 72 points takes into account descenders.

To make inch-high letters, draw two horizontal guides an inch apart, type your text with the baseline on the bottom one, then scale up the type until it touches the top one.