For the longest time I had the impression that 12 point font was “standard” for most documents, and many people still seem to have that impression. But nowadays Microsoft Word’s default font size is 11 pt (and the font is “Calibri”, wtf is that about?), and Google Docs also uses 11 pt as the default. I know you can change this setting but it still annoys me, because I think of 12 as standard. What gives?
I don’t know the answer, but I believe the 11 point thing came in at the same time they switched default fonts from Times New Roman to Calibri. There’s probably a connection. Could Calibri be slightly larger somehow?
IIRC, the Calibri switch was MS acknowledging (declaring?) that printing is becoming secondary, even in Word. Times is designed for printed legibility, Calibri is designed for screen legibility.
Not sure about the size switch, but I always thought 12pt seemed a little large. I’d actually used 11pt for a lot of things I’d printed personally just because it seemed…more correct.
I rarely use 12 point. It seems to big.
Was standard typewriter font approximately 12 point?
When? January 30, 2007.
Typewriters and their fonts were generally classed as either Pica (10 characters per inch) or Elite (12 CPI). Line spacing was usually 6 lines per inch.
That’s all for monospaced fonts of course, which is what the vast majority of typewriters used. Also, I’m speaking of how things were in the US. European typewriters might have been different.
My hazy recollections of the late 1980s when I first converted over from typing to word processing are that we were told that 12-point fonts were about the same size as Pica text and 10-point fonts were about the same as Elite text.
Other way around. There are 12 pts in a pica. (And 72 pts in an inch = 6 picas in an inch)
And of course, if you had to write a paper with a required number of pages (ie: a five page paper), you would use a standard 14 point font. 
Those numbers fit perfectly with Courier, at least. (Courier-10pt has 12 CPI, and Courier-12pt has 10 CPI.)
That very well might be how the printers define the term, but “Pica” typewriter fonts were still 10 characters per (horizontal) inch.
The 6 picas per inch might be the origin of the standard line spacing though. (But I’m not sure.)
You must be fairly young then. To go from 12 to 11 is moving in the wrong direction, for me. I’m 51. I don’t mind getting older—honest, it’s fine with me—except for the one thing I really hate about it: declining eyesight. I have to strain my eyes to read, more and more. When I open some web page with font this tiny, I curse the juvenile delinquents who made it that way. 11 is not my friend. I believe I speak for many of the 50+ cohort. Lately, I write in Word with 13, except for work because they want everything in TNR 12. And I magnify the view some.
In legal work, most courts require 12 point font. Some 13 (Alaska) and some 14 (Hawaii federal courts). I was got hauled in front of the Judge for using a font too small.
I was thinking that it was those few who wanted to write more then the allowed limit in school. While most of us were setting wide margins, triple spacing and expanding the font as much as we can. There were a few who were doing the opposite trying to write more and they may have finally gotten their way.
The term “pica” as used for typewriters is not the same as the unit “pica” used in typesetting. On typewriters, pica size was 10 characters an inch.
I realize now why it bugs me so much. To me, a “nice, round” number is either even or at least divisible by 5. 11 is an odd, prime number and thus neither of those things. We can’t have a weird number like that as a default value!
This has to stop.
Write a letter to Bill Gates! Make sure it’s in 11pt Calibri, though.
It’s because computer screens got bigger.
I don’t think that 12 point has ever been standard for documents, except possibly in word processors. Pick up almost any professionally typeset book or newspaper and you’ll probably find that the running text is much smaller. TeX uses 10pt as its default setting; knowing the amount of research Knuth put into that system, I’m inclined to believe that was the most common font size for books and journals, at least in the 1970s and 1980s.
Yeah, I meant in word processors.
IIRC, it has to do with onscreen font-smoothing algorithms more than anything. I don’t remember where I saw it — it was a few years ago — but I read that odd-numbered type sizes (11pt, 13pt, 15pt, etc.) look better on screen due to the way the various font-smoothing techniques work.