Typography is an old art and has developed over the years a bewildering variety of mutually incompatible units. The old Roman foot/inch system did not offer a unit fine enough for typography, so a whole set of special-purpose ad hoc units were created in various regions of the world. The problem is that different countries use different (but similar) units, adding to the great confusion.
Typographical Unit Conversion
Use this calculator to convert between different units of measurement specific to typography, such as points and picas.
Disclaimer:
The numerical results from this calculator are estimates only and are not guaranteed. All results are rounded to five decimal places.
Conversion Notes
A point is the basic measure of font size, usually considered to be about 1/72 of an inch. This unit comes from old traditions of typography and, nowadays, is slightly distorted because of "simplified" computer typesetting technique.
Below is a key to the point method abbreviations used in this unit conversion calculator.
| POINT UNIT | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|
| ATA = |
0.3514598 mm (0.0138366 inch) ATA efers to the Anglo-Saxon method of typographical measurement. |
| Didot = |
0.3759 mm (about 1/68 inch) A Didot is a variant of the point that is used in Europe. It is named after the French printer François Ambroise Didot (1730-1804), who first defined the point-based typographical measurement system. |
| IN = |
0.4 mm l'Imprimerie Nationale refers to a French variant of the point. |
| PS = |
0.3527777778 mm (1/72 inch)
A Postscript point is derived from Postscript®, a proprietary "page description language" based on work originally done by John Gaffney and finally implemented in its current form by John Warnock et al. after he and Chuck Geschke founded Adobe Systems, Inc. in 1982. |
| TeX = |
0.3514598035 mm (1/72.27 inch)
TeX is a powerful macro-based text formatter written by Donald Knuth. It is very popular in academia, especially in the computer-science community. |
| Tru = |
0.188 mm A Truchet point is an obsolete variant of the point. |
You can learn more about the differences between the various typographical point systems at Alex Vakulenko's website.
