TypeTalk: Find Figure Styles in OpenType Fonts

Q. You’ve written about figures in Open Type fonts, both oldstyle and lining variants and tabular and proportional spacing. But I have trouble figuring out which fonts have which. Can you help unravel this numerical mystery?

A. I understand your confusion. Many type designers and foundries include more than one style of numeral in their fonts, but it’s not always easy to identify which styles are in a font.
Begin by selecting the font in question and bringing up the OpenType controls. In InDesign, you do so from the Control bar or by choosing Type > Character and selecting OpenType from the dropdown menu. In Illustrator, go to Window > Type > OpenType. In QuarkXPress (7.x and up), use the Measurements palette.

Now you should see the OpenType figure options. If the options are bracketed, the font only has one figure style (most often tabular lining).

If options are unbracketed, pay close attention — this is where the confusion and occasional inconsistency come in.

• InDesign lists all four figures styles as well as a Default figure option on the bottom of the OpenType panel. You can only select one.

• Illustrator lists a Default figure option and all four figures styles in the OpenType panel’s figure pull-down menu. You can only select one.

• QuarkXPress (7.x and up) breaks up figure options into two groups: Tabular and Proportional, as well as Lining and Oldstyle. The user selects one option in each category.

If a font has all four figure styles, no problem — just choose among them. But in a font with more than one but less than all four figure styles, all options usually remain unbracketed and thus presumably selectable. This can be misleading. For instance, if a font has both proportional and tabular lining figures, such as ITC American Typewriter Pro, but no oldstyle figures, all remain unbracketed, even the nonexistent oldstyle.

The same situation can arise if a font has both proportional lining and oldstyle figures, but no tabular figures, which might still remain an unbracketed option.

The solution to this problem? The fastest and easiest way is to set some numerals and see for yourself if the settings are accurate.

Ilene Strizver is a noted typographic educator, author, designer and founder of The Type Studio in Westport, Connecticut. Her book, Type Rules! The designer’s guide to professional typography, is now in its 4th edition.
  • Anonymous says:

    Ilene:

    I enjoy your columns very much.

    A subject that I’d like to see addressed is typography for business use — letters, contracts, etc.

    There are many articles on typography for designers and for typesetting books, etc., but I do not see articles on proper typography for business documents, probably because business people do not seek out typography information. The result is that most business documents are composed using typewriter rules — half inch indents, put in a blank paragraph between paragraphs (even though Word has long supported space before and after paragraphs), two spaces after a period, etc.

    Word 2010 is about to be released. It provides new support for tracking, kerning, OpenType features, etc., thus for the first time making (somewhat crude versions of) the tools long available in publishing programs more readily available to those using word processors. It thus seems to be a good time for people experienced in typography to consider addressing considerations specific to business documents with longer line lengths than typically found in books.

    Among issues I’d like to see considered are:

    1. Suitable typefaces: Most business people use Times New Roman because it was one of the first typefaces available on HP Laser Printers and later with Windows 3.1. Should they be considering a Garamond, or perhaps some of Microsoft’s new fonts such as Constantia?

    2. Is it appropriate to begin paragraphs with an M-space indent, such as is customarily used in books, or does the longer line length make a bigger indent, such as 0.5″ appropriate? Books do not customarily use both indents and blank vertical spaces between paragraphs. Is is appropriate to do so in business correspondence with roughly 6.5 inch lines of type?

    3. What else can people composing letters do to improve readability?

    Thanks.

    John Hoffman

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