On Tue, March 11, 2008 4:58 pm, Jason Crosse wrote: > I've got a pretty basic question. How wide is a typographical space > in relative units? I want to pad a one-line element's left side so > it looks like a space has been inserted. > > Is there a reliable way of doing this (e.g 0.5ex;), or does is just > depend on how big a given font's space is? > > If it's dependent on the font, is there a traditional proportion > that's widely used across popular fonts?
I don't know what tends to be the case in computer typography, but harking back to my days of letterpress printing, apart from the em and en (0.5em) spaces, there were thicks, mids and thins, also known as three-to-em, four-to-em and five-to-em. Unless one was setting type with full justification, when the spacing had to vary on a line-by-line and word-by-word basis, the most common word spacing was a thick, or 1/3 of an em - 0.33em should be accurate enough :-) HTH, Nick. -- Nick Fitzsimons http://www.nickfitz.co.uk/ ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
