AIGA NHVT

Whenever you set figures, you have two important choices to make about the style of figures you use. Lining or oldstyle forms? Tabular or proportional spacing? If you don’t know the difference, you’re probably making the wrong decision most of the time.

Lining vs. oldstyle forms

Lining figures all stand the full height from the baseline to the cap line. This gives them the appearance of uppercase letterforms. Lining figures are generally set when numbers are separate from body text, within data tables, or when the capital letterform appearance is desired. They are also referred to as titling figures or ranging figures.

Oldstyle figures stand from the basline to the x-line, and sometimes extend beyond with acenders and decenders. This gives them the appearance of lowercase letterforms. Oldstyle figures are generally set when numerals are used within a paragraph or the lowercase letterform appearance is desired. They are also referred to as text figures, hanging figures, or lowercase figures.

Tabular vs. proportional spacing

Tabular figures use a consistent spacing for each character. They have a specific purpose: to be used in data tables. When you use tabular spacing, figures line up vertically when set on top of one another. This is an obvious must when math is involved.

Proportional figures are spaced optically, much like other letterforms. Using proportional spacing enhances the horizontal readability of figures. This is very often preferable to vertical readability that lining figures are used for. Proportional spacing looks more natural.

The problem

Many fonts do not support alternate figure styles. Type designers nearly always elected to use tabular spacing. Typesetters are forced to manually kern those typefaces if they wanted proportional spacing. Lining figures are frequently chosen, but occasionally oldstyle figures are used. In many cases, if you want to use the figures that match the rest of the typeface, you have no choice but to use the style that was included. On some professionally designed typefaces, lining forms are included in the main font file, and a secondary “expert set” contains oldstyle forms. Even with the secondary set, some manual work is still needed to get both proper forms and proper spacing at the same time.

The solution: OpenType

One reason to love working with OpenType is its support for figure styles. When using an OpenType font and a supporting application, selecting the proper figure style is as easy as changing a dropdown box. The selector is located in different places depending on the appication you use, but it’s been supported since InDesign 2, Illustrator and Photoshop CS, and Quark 7.

Sadly, web typographers are out of luck. There are currently no methods available to specify the desired numeric variant with HTML and CSS. Most web typefaces utilize only tabular lining figures, but one notable exception is Georgia, which provides oldstyle figures.

-Michael Niggel