Editing Typeface (section)

===Proportion<span class="anchor" id="Proportional font"></span><span class="anchor" id="proportional font"></span><span class="anchor" id="Proportional fonts"></span><span class="anchor" id="proportional fonts"></span><span class="anchor" id="tabular numeral"></span>===
[[Image:Proportional-vs-monospace-v5.svg|thumb|upright=1.35|right|Proportional v monospace]]

A '''proportional''' typeface, also called '''variable-width''' typeface, contains glyphs of varying widths, while a '''[[#Monospaced typefaces|monospaced]]''' ('''non-proportional''' or '''fixed-width''') typeface uses a single standard width for all glyphs in the font. '''[[Duospaced font]]s''' are similar to monospaced fonts, but characters can also be two character widths instead of a single character width.

Many people generally find proportional typefaces nicer-looking and easier to read, and thus they appear more commonly in professionally published printed material.{{citation needed|date=March 2013}} For the same reason, [[GUI]] computer applications (such as [[word processor]]s and [[web browser]]s) typically use proportional fonts. However, many proportional fonts contain fixed-width ('''tabular''') numerals so that columns of numbers stay aligned.<ref>{{cite web |title=Understanding numerals |first=Elliot Jay |last=Stocks |url=https://fonts.google.com/knowledge/introducing_type/understanding_numerals |website=Google Fonts |series=Introducing type}}</ref>

Monospaced typefaces function better for some purposes because their glyphs line up in neat, regular columns. No glyph is given any more weight than another. Most manually operated [[typewriter]]s use monospaced fonts. So do [[text mode|text-only computer displays]] and third- and fourth-generation game console graphics processors, which treat the screen as a uniform grid of character cells. Most computer programs which have a text-based interface ([[terminal emulator]]s, for example) use only monospaced fonts (or add additional spacing to proportional fonts to fit them in monospaced cells) in their configuration. Monospaced fonts are commonly used by [[computer programmer]]s for displaying and editing [[source code]] so that certain characters (for example [[parentheses]] used to group arithmetic expressions) are easy to see.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://stackoverflow.com/questions/218623/why-use-monospace-fonts-in-your-ide |title=Why use monospace fonts in your IDE?|access-date=2009-02-22}}</ref>{{better source needed|reason=not a [[wp:RS]], user generated content|date=February 2022}}

[[ASCII art]] usually requires a monospaced font for proper viewing, with the exception of [[Shift JIS art]] which takes advantage of the proportional characters in the [[MS Mincho|MS PGothic]] font. In a [[web page]], the <code>&lt;tt&gt; &lt;/tt&gt;</code>, <code>&lt;code&gt; &lt;/code&gt;</code> or <code>&lt;pre&gt; &lt;/pre&gt;</code> [[HTML]] tags most commonly specify monospaced fonts. In [[LaTeX]], the ''verbatim'' environment or the [[Teletype Corporation|Teletype]] font family (e.g., <code>\texttt{...}</code> or <code>{\ttfamily ...}</code>) uses monospaced fonts (in [[TeX]], use <code>{\tt ...}</code>).

Any two lines of text with the same number of characters in each line in a monospaced typeface should display as equal in width, while the same two lines in a proportional typeface may have radically different widths. This occurs because in a proportional font, glyph widths vary, such that wider glyphs (typically those for characters such as W, Q, Z, M, D, O, H, and U) use more space, and narrower glyphs (such as those for the characters i, t, l, and 1) use less space than the average.

In the publishing industry, it was once the case that editors read [[manuscript]]s in monospaced fonts (typically [[Courier (typeface)|Courier]]) for ease of editing and word count estimates, and it was considered discourteous to submit a manuscript in a proportional font.{{citation needed|date=March 2013}} This has become less universal in recent years, such that authors need to check with editors as to their preference, though monospaced fonts are still the norm.