Type Size

(Russian, kegel’), the size of printing type, including the face and shoulders—the spaces above and below the face, forming the intervals between lines of the text in a printed book or newspaper. Type size is measured by points (a point is 0.376 mm) or squares (48 points).

Type sizes used in the USSR are (in points) 5, 6 (nonpareil), 7, 8 (brevier), 9 (bourgeois), 10 (long primer), 12 (cicero), 14, 16, 20, 24, 28, and 36 and (in squares) 1, 1¼, 1½, 2, 2½, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 15. The main text of the articles in the Bol’shaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia (3rd ed.) is set in seven-point type, the encyclopedia font especially created by Kudriashev.