A monospaced font, also called a fixed-pitch, fixed-width, or non-proportional font, is a
font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mod ...
whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts with
variable-width fonts, where the letters and spacings have different widths.
Monospaced fonts are customary on
typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...
s and for
typesetting
Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or ''glyphs'' in digital systems representing ''characters'' (letters and other symbols).Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random Ho ...
computer code.
Monospaced fonts were widely used in early
computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...
s and
computer terminal
A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. The teletype was an example of an early-day hard-copy terminal and ...
s, which often had extremely limited graphical capabilities. Hardware implementation was simplified by using a
text mode
Text mode is a computer display mode in which content is internally represented on a computer screen in terms of characters rather than individual pixels. Typically, the screen consists of a uniform rectangular grid of ''character cells'', each ...
where the screen layout was addressed as a regular grid of tiles, each of which could be set to display a character by indexing into the hardware's character map. Some systems allowed colored text to be displayed by varying the foreground and background color for each tile. Other effects included
reverse video
Reverse video (or invert video or inverse video or reverse screen) is a computer display technique whereby the background and text color values are inverted. On older computers, displays were usually designed to display text on a black backgroun ...
and blinking text. Nevertheless, these early systems were typically limited to a single
console
Console may refer to:
Computing and video games
* System console, a physical device to operate a computer
** Virtual console, a user interface for multiple computer consoles on one device
** Command-line interface, a method of interacting with ...
font.
Even though computers can now display a wide variety of fonts, the majority of
IDEs Ides or IDES may refer to:
Calendar dates
* Ides (calendar), a day in the Roman calendar that fell roughly in the middle of the month. In March, May, July, and October it was the 15th day of the month; in other months it was the 13th.
**Ides of Mar ...
and software
text editors
A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be us ...
employ a monospaced font as the default typeface. This increases the readability of
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
, which is often heavily reliant on distinctions involving individual symbols, and makes differences between letters more unambiguous in situations like password entry boxes where typing mistakes are unacceptable. Monospaced fonts are also used in
terminal emulation
A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote termi ...
and for laying out tabulated data in plain text documents. In technical manuals and resources for programming languages, a monospaced font is often used to distinguish code from natural-language text. Monospaced fonts are also used by
disassembler
A disassembler is a computer program that translates machine language into assembly language—the inverse operation to that of an assembler. A disassembler differs from a decompiler, which targets a high-level language rather than an assembly lan ...
output, causing the information to align in vertical columns.
Optical character recognition
Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a scen ...
has better accuracy with monospaced fonts. Examples are
OCR-A
OCR-A is a font created in 1968, in the early days of computer optical character recognition, when there was a need for a font that could be recognized not only by the computers of that day, but also by humans. OCR-A uses simple, thick strokes to ...
and
OCR-B
OCR-B is a monospace font developed in 1968 by Adrian Frutiger for Monotype by following the European Computer Manufacturer's Association standard. Its function was to facilitate the optical character recognition operations by specific electroni ...
.
The term ''modern'' is sometimes used as a synonym for ''monospace'' generic font family. The term ''modern'' can be used for a fixed-pitch generic font family name, which is used in
OpenDocument
The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML files. It was developed wi ...
format (ISO/IEC 26300:2006) and
Rich Text Format
)
As an example, the following RTF code
would be rendered as follows:
This is some bold text.
Character encoding
A standard RTF file can only consist of 7-bit ASCII characters, but can use escape sequences to encode other characters. Th ...
.
Examples of monospaced fonts include
Courier
A courier is a person or organisation that delivers a message, package or letter from one place or person to another place or person. Typically, a courier provides their courier service on a commercial contract basis; however, some couriers are ...
,
Lucida Console
Lucida (pronunciation: ) is an extended family of related typefaces designed by Charles Bigelow (type designer), Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes and released from 1984 onwards. The family is intended to be extremely legible when printed at small ...
,
Menlo,
Monaco
Monaco (; ), officially the Principality of Monaco (french: Principauté de Monaco; Ligurian: ; oc, Principat de Mónegue), is a sovereign city-state and microstate on the French Riviera a few kilometres west of the Italian region of Lig ...
,
Consolas
Consolas is a monospaced typeface designed by Luc(as) de Groot. It is a part of the ClearType Font Collection, a suite of fonts that take advantage of Microsoft's ClearType font rendering technology. It has been included with Windows since Window ...
,
Inconsolata
Inconsolata is an open-source font created by Raph Levien and released under the SIL Open Font License. It is a humanist monospaced font designed for source code listing, terminal emulators, and similar uses. It was influenced by the proprietar ...
and
Source Code Pro
Source Code Pro is a monospaced sans serif typeface created by Paul D. Hunt for Adobe Systems. It is the second open-source font family from Adobe, distributed under the SIL Open Font License.
Source Code Pro (2012)
Source Code Pro is a set o ...
.
Use in art
Multiple art forms have developed within computers' and typewriters' monospaced typographic settings in which the ''n''th character of every line align vertically with each other. (Such a group of characters is sometimes called a column.) A proportional and monospaced font's reproduction of an element of ANSI art,
line drawing, is illustrated below.
The failure of a proportional font to reproduce the desired boxes above motivates monospaced fonts' use in the creation and viewing of
ASCII
ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...
and
ANSI
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organi ...
art. Some poetry composed monospaced on typewriters or computers also depends on the vertical alignment of character columns.
E. E. Cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings, who was also known as E. E. Cummings, e. e. cummings and e e cummings (October 14, 1894 - September 3, 1962), was an American poet, painter, essayist, author and playwright. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobi ...
' poetry is often set in monospaced type for this reason. Some classic video games (e.g.
NetHack
''NetHack'' is an open source single-player roguelike video game, first released in 1987 and maintained by the NetHack DevTeam. The game is a fork of the 1982 game ''Hack'', itself inspired by the 1980 game '' Rogue''. The player takes the role a ...
) and those imitating their style (e.g.
Dwarf Fortress
''Dwarf Fortress'' (officially called ''Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress'') is a construction and management simulation and roguelike indie video game created by Bay 12 Games. Available as freeware and in development sin ...
) use a monospaced grid of characters to render their state for the player.
''Quiz Show'' (1976) is believed to be the first video game to use 8×8 monospaced "arcade font", which got widely adopted by computer games of the time.
Tabular figures
Many fonts that generally are not monospaced have numerals that are known as
tabular figures
A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
There are thousands o ...
.
As tabular spacing makes all numbers with the same number of digits the same width, it is used for typesetting documents such as price lists, stock listings and sums in mathematics textbooks, all of which require columns of numbers to line up on top of each other for easier comparison. Tabular spacing is also a common feature of simple printing devices such as
cash register
A cash register, sometimes called a till or automated money handling system, is a mechanical or electronic device for registering and calculating transactions at a point of sale. It is usually attached to a drawer for storing cash and other v ...
s and date-stamps. Fonts intended for professional use in documents such as business reports may also make the bold numbers take up the same width as the numbers in regular style; the consistency between styles is called "
duplexing
A duplex communication system is a Point-to-point (telecommunications), point-to-point system composed of two or more connected parties or devices that can communicate with one another in both directions. Duplex systems are employed in many commu ...
".
The alternative to tabular spacing is proportional spacing, which places the numbers closely together, reducing empty space in a document, and is thought to allow the numbers to blend into the text more effectively. With modern fonts using the TrueType or
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...
formats, it is possible to include both proportional and tabular figures in the same font file, and choose between them using font options settings in applications such as
word processor
A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features.
Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...
s or web browsers.
Other uses
In biochemistry, monospaced fonts are preferred for displaying
nucleic acid
Nucleic acids are biopolymers, macromolecules, essential to all known forms of life. They are composed of nucleotides, which are the monomers made of three components: a 5-carbon sugar, a phosphate group and a nitrogenous base. The two main cl ...
and
protein
Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, respo ...
sequences, as they ensure that the representation of every
nucleotide
Nucleotides are organic molecules consisting of a nucleoside and a phosphate. They serve as monomeric units of the nucleic acid polymers – deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA), both of which are essential biomolecules wi ...
or
amino acid
Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although hundreds of amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the alpha-amino acids, which comprise proteins. Only 22 alpha am ...
occupies the same amount of space. Alignment of the letters makes it easier to compare different sequences visually.
Both
screenplays and
stage play
A play is a work of drama, usually consisting mostly of dialogue between Character (arts), characters and intended for theatre, theatrical performance rather than just Reading (process), reading. The writer of a play is called a playwright.
Pla ...
scripts frequently use monospaced fonts, to make it easier to judge the time a script will last for from the number of pages. The industry standard is 12 point
Courier
A courier is a person or organisation that delivers a message, package or letter from one place or person to another place or person. Typically, a courier provides their courier service on a commercial contract basis; however, some couriers are ...
. A tradition holds that, on this format, one page of script will take one minute of screen or stage time.
Monospaced fonts are frequently used in
tablature
Tablature (or tabulature, or tab for short) is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering rather than musical pitches.
Tablature is common for fretted stringed instruments such as the guitar, lute or vihuela, as well as many fr ...
music for guitar and bass guitar. Each line in a tabulature represents a guitar string, which requires that chords played across multiple strings be tabbed in vertical sequence, a feat accomplished only with the predictability of fixed width.
See also
*
List of monospaced typefaces
This list of monospaced typefaces details standard monospaced fonts used in classical typesetting and printing.
Additional monospaced typefaces
*Anonymou ...
*
Duospaced font
A duospaced font (also called a duospace font) is a fixed-width font whose letters and characters occupy either of two integer multiples of a specified, fixed horizontal space. Traditionally, this means either a single or double character width, al ...
*
Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols
Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols is a Unicode block comprising styled forms of Latin alphabet, Latin and Greek alphabet, Greek letters and decimal numerical digit, digits that enable mathematicians to denote different notions with different ...
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Monospaced Font
Typesetting