Re: Need a smarter person than me
Sharon Burton-Hardin wrote:
...all body text must be 5/32 inches and ...all warnings and cautions must be 3/16 inches
That'd be 11.25 points and 13.5 points, respectively.
Those are hardly common type sizes. <:(
They actually are not type sizes at all. And therein lies the rub. These are labeling requirements, and they are based on some rather strange assumptions on the part of the lawyers who draft government regulations.
Such requirements refer to the height of printed letters--that is, they take into account only the actual visible impression, not the theoretical font size. So, to be safe, Sharon would have to use 12 pt and 14 pt type, respectively. The reason is that the design of most fonts includes some variable space above the caps and ascenders and below the descenders that is never covered by ink. Further, a given line of type appearing on a label might not include the highest characters in the font or the longest descenders in the font. And the lawyers only care about the actual letters in the line of type on the label in front of them--not what other characters the font might contain.
The reason all of this is really peculiar is that it is based on a cockamamie hypothesis that if you specify the minimum height of the type, you have ensured a level of readability. What label designers have done for many decades, however, is to use highly condensed fonts with extremely thin strokes, in all caps, to obscure the readability of any information they were less than proud of, completely defeating the intent of the regulations. But, as we all know, lawyers are not typographers ;-)
Dick
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References:
Need a smarter person than me: From: Sharon Burton-Hardin
Re: Need a smarter person than me: From: dmbrown
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