Text figures are numeral

Numeral system

A numeral system is a writing system for expressing numbers, that is a mathematical notation for representing numbers of a given set, using graphemes or symbols in a consistent manner....

s typeset with varying heights in a fashion that resembles a typical line of running text, hence the name. They are contrasted with lining or titling figures, which are all of consistent height.

Design

In text figures, the shape and positioning of the numerals vary as those of lowercase letters do. In the most common scheme, 0

0 (number)

0 is both a numberand the numerical digit used to represent that number in numerals.It fulfills a central role in mathematics as the additive identity of the integers, real numbers, and many other algebraic structures. As a digit, 0 is used as a placeholder in place value systems...

, 1, and 2 are of x-height

X-height

In typography, the x-height or corpus size refers to the distance between the baseline and the mean line in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the letter x in the font , as well as the u, v, w, and z...

, having neither ascenders nor descenders; 6 and 8 have ascenders; and 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9 have descenders. Other schemes exist; for example, the types

Typeface

In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....

 cut by the Didot

Didot

Didot is the name of a family of French printers, punch-cutters and publishers. Through its achievements and advancements in printing, publishing and typography, the family has lent its name to typographic measurements developed by François-Ambroise Didot and the Didot typeface developed by Firmin...

 family of punchcutters and typographers in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 between the late 18th and early 19th centuries typically had an ascending 3, a form preserved in some later French typefaces. A few other typefaces used different arrangements.

High-quality typesetting

Typesetting

Typesetting is the composition of text by means of types.Typesetting requires the prior process of designing a font and storing it in some manner...

 prefers text figures in body text: they integrate better with lowercase letters and small capitals, and their greater variety of shape facilitates reading. They help accomplish consistent typographic colour in blocks of text, unlike runs of lining figures, which can distract the eye. (Such a distraction may be desired when numbers are to stand out, for example in scientific text.) Lining figures are called for in all-capitals settings (hence the alternative name titling figures), and may work better in tables and spreadsheet

Spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...

s.

Although many traditional fonts included a complete set of each kind of numbers, most digital fonts today (except those used by professional printers) include only one or the other. Lining figures remain more common. The few common digital fonts with default text figures include Candara

Candara

Candara is a humanist sans-serif typeface, which is bundled with Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows 7. Candara’s verticals show both entasis and ekstasis on opposite sides of stems, high-branching arcades in the lowercase, large apertures in all open forms, and unique ogee curves on diagonals.The...

, Constantia

Constantia (typeface)

Constantia is part of the suite of typefaces that come with Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Office 2007. The development began in 2003....

, Corbel

Corbel (typeface)

Corbel is a sans-serif typeface designed by Jeremy Tankard for Microsoft and released in 2005. It is a part of the new suite of fonts that come with Microsoft Windows Vista developed to take advantage of ClearType to improve the reading experience in Windows Vista and Office 2007.Corbel is designed...

, Hoefler Text

Hoefler Text

Hoefler Text is a contemporary serif Antiqua font that was designed for Apple Computer to demonstrate advanced type technologies. Hoefler Text was created to allow the composition of complex typography; as such it takes cues from a range of classic fonts, such as Garamond and Janson.Designed by...

, Georgia

Georgia (typeface)

Georgia is a transitional serif typeface designed in 1993 by Matthew Carter and hinted by Tom Rickner for the Microsoft Corporation, as the serif companion to the first Microsoft sans serif screen font, Verdana. Microsoft released the initial version of the font on November 1, 1996 as part of the...

, Junicode

Junicode

Junicode is a free old-style serif typeface developed by Peter S. Baker of the University of Virginia. The design is based on a 17th century typeface used in Oxford, England....

 and FF Scala

FF Scala

FF Scala is an old style, humanist, serif typeface designed by Dutch typeface designer Martin Majoor in 1990 for the Vredenburg Music Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The FF Scala font family was named for the Teatro alla Scala in Milan...

. First version of Palatino

Palatino

Palatino is the name of a large typeface family that began as an old style serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf initially released in 1948 by the Linotype foundry.In 1999, Zapf revised Palatino for Linotype and Microsoft, called Palatino Linotype...

 had both text figures and lining figures.. Then its clone called FPL Neu provided both text figures and lining figures, both in Type 1

Type 1

Type 1 or Type I may refer to:*US F1 Type 1, 2010 F1 Car*Bugatti Type 1, an automobile*Diabetes mellitus type 1 , insulin-dependent diabetes*Type 1 37 mm Anti-Tank Gun*Type 1 47 mm Anti-Tank Gun...

 -format and OpenType

OpenType

OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...

 -format.

History

As the name medieval numerals implies, text figures have been in use since the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

, when Arabic numerals

Arabic numerals

Arabic numerals or Hindu numerals or Hindu-Arabic numerals or Indo-Arabic numerals are the ten digits . They are descended from the Hindu-Arabic numeral system developed by Indian mathematicians, in which a sequence of digits such as "975" is read as a numeral...

 reached 12th century Europe, where they eventually supplanted Roman numerals

Roman numerals

The numeral system of ancient Rome, or Roman numerals, uses combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet to signify values. The numbers 1 to 10 can be expressed in Roman numerals as:...

.

Lining figures came out of the new middle-class phenomenon of shopkeepers’ hand-lettered signage. They were introduced to European typography in 1788, when Richard Austin cut a new font for type founder John Bell, which included three-quarter height lining figures. They were further developed by 19th-century type designers, and largely displaced text figures in some contexts, such as newspaper

Newspaper

A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

 and advertising

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

 typography.

The use of text figures suffered further setbacks for most of the 20th century, amid attempts to do away with typographic case altogether, and they became rarer still with the advent of phototypesetting

Phototypesetting

Phototypesetting was a method of setting type, rendered obsolete with the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing software, that uses a photographic process to generate columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper...

. Fine book faces for mechanical typesetting still used text numerals well into the 20th century, and they began to make a strong comeback.

Text figures are not encoded separately in Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

, because they are not considered separate characters from lining figures, only a different way of writing the same characters. However, some fonts offer both text and lining figures, either using OpenType

OpenType

OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...

 features to select between them or using Unicode's Private Use Area for one or the other set; for instance, Adobe

Adobe Systems

Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...

's "Pro" fonts use codepoints U+F643 to U+F64C to encode text figures.

External links

• Using Numbers in the Proper Case by David Bergsland