Some typefaces do have small cap sized figures as well. I have yet to see these used in the wild (outside of the type design world), but if you are setting a table that requires that oldstyle mood, look no further. This makes sense from a logical point of view because it fills out the set: Lining in tabular and proportional varieties, and oldstyle in tabular and proportional. As the name describes, these figures are tabular yet with oldstyle forms. Tabular oldstyle, best for tables & columns in that oldstyle flavor The stand-out characteristic of tabular lining figures is usually a numeral one with a lot of white space on both sides, sometimes compensated for with a wide flag and foot serifs to try to fill some of that white space.This is a similar concept to monospaced fonts, where all of the glyphs are the same width, as seen in typewriter-style typefaces.Ĥ. See Helvetica for an example of figures that are a little shorter than the caps. This is an optical adjustment thing, and a stylistic option for the type designer. In some cases, if the figures were as heavy (stroke width) as the caps, they would stand out as being too dark. Some typefaces have figures that are a little bit shorter than the caps to balance the color and weight with the rest of the typeface. Making something easy to read is one of the typographer’s main goals. When the figures are aligned, the table is easier to read and scan for information. Real life examples include an Excel spreadsheet or a receipt. “Lining” means the figures align horizontally with each other, usually around the height of the capitals. “Tabular” means the figures are designed for tables, so the figures all have the same advance width. The most common figures found in fonts are tabular lining figures. Tabular lining, best for tables & columns So: 10 is a number, but 1 and 0, individually, are figures. Numbers, after all, can be anything-10, 200, 0.0125, whatever. When typographers talk about the characters that make up numbers, we call them figures.

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