Monospace font
Encyclopedia
A monospaced font, also called a fixed-pitch or non-proportional font, is a font
whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts to variable-width fonts, where the letters differ in size to one another.
The first monospaced typefaces were designed for typewriters, which could only move the same distance forward with each letter typed. This also meant that monospaced fonts need not be typeset like variable width fonts and were, arguably, easier to deal with.
Note that this article generally assumes Western (Latin-based, Cyrillic, or Greek) writing systems. East Asia
n rules of typography, for example, require CJK fonts to always be monospaced at least as far as the main characters for writing words (i.e. not punctuation) are concerned. Other scripts vary in their use of monospaced fonts. There is an attempt at a monospaced Arabic font—"Simplified Arabic Fixed".
s and computer terminal
s, which often had extremely limited graphical capabilities. Hardware implementation was simplified by using a text mode
where the screen layout was addressed as a regular grid of tiles, each of which could be set to display a character by indexing into the hardware's character map. Some systems allowed colored text to be displayed by varying the foreground and background color for each tile. Other effects included reverse video
and blinking text. Nevertheless, these early systems were typically limited to a single console
font.
Even though computers can now display a wide variety of fonts, almost every commercial IDE
and software text editor
employs a monospaced font as the default typeface. This increases the readability of source code
, which is often heavily reliant on distinctions involving individual symbols. Monospaced fonts are also used in terminal emulation and for laying out tabulated data in plain text documents. In technical manuals and resources for programming languages, a monospaced font is often used to distinguish code from natural language text.
The term modern is sometimes used as a synonym for monospace generic font family. The term modern can be used for a fixed-pitch generic font family name used in OpenDocument
format (ISO/IEC 26300:2006) and Rich Text Format
.
and protein
sequences, as they ensure that the representation of every nucleotide
or amino acid
occupies the same amount of space. Alignment of the letters makes it easier to compare different sequences visually.
Font
In typography, a font is traditionally defined as a quantity of sorts composing a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface...
whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts to variable-width fonts, where the letters differ in size to one another.
The first monospaced typefaces were designed for typewriters, which could only move the same distance forward with each letter typed. This also meant that monospaced fonts need not be typeset like variable width fonts and were, arguably, easier to deal with.
Note that this article generally assumes Western (Latin-based, Cyrillic, or Greek) writing systems. East Asia
East Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
n rules of typography, for example, require CJK fonts to always be monospaced at least as far as the main characters for writing words (i.e. not punctuation) are concerned. Other scripts vary in their use of monospaced fonts. There is an attempt at a monospaced Arabic font—"Simplified Arabic Fixed".
Use in computers
Monospaced fonts were widely used in early computerComputer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
s and computer terminal
Computer terminal
A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying data from, a computer or a computing system...
s, which often had extremely limited graphical capabilities. Hardware implementation was simplified by using a text mode
Text mode
Text mode is a kind of computer display mode in which the content of the screen is internally represented in terms of characters rather than individual pixels. Typically, the screen consists of a uniform rectangular grid of character cells, each of which contains one of the characters of a...
where the screen layout was addressed as a regular grid of tiles, each of which could be set to display a character by indexing into the hardware's character map. Some systems allowed colored text to be displayed by varying the foreground and background color for each tile. Other effects included reverse video
Reverse video
Reverse video is a computer display technique whereby the background and text colour values are inverted. On older computers, displays were usually configured to display white text on a black background by default. For emphasis, one swapped the color scheme to bright background with dark text...
and blinking text. Nevertheless, these early systems were typically limited to a single console
Command-line interface
A command-line interface is a mechanism for interacting with a computer operating system or software by typing commands to perform specific tasks...
font.
Even though computers can now display a wide variety of fonts, almost every commercial IDE
Integrated development environment
An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...
and software text editor
Text editor
A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code....
employs a monospaced font as the default typeface. This increases the readability of source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
, which is often heavily reliant on distinctions involving individual symbols. Monospaced fonts are also used in terminal emulation and for laying out tabulated data in plain text documents. In technical manuals and resources for programming languages, a monospaced font is often used to distinguish code from natural language text.
The term modern is sometimes used as a synonym for monospace generic font family. The term modern can be used for a fixed-pitch generic font family name used in OpenDocument
OpenDocument
The Open Document Format for Office Applications is an XML-based file format for representing electronic documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents....
format (ISO/IEC 26300:2006) and Rich Text Format
Rich Text Format
The Rich Text Format is a proprietary document file format with published specification developed by Microsoft Corporation since 1987 for Microsoft products and for cross-platform document interchange....
.
Use in biology
Monospaced fonts are preferred for displaying nucleic acidNucleic acid
Nucleic acids are biological molecules essential for life, and include DNA and RNA . Together with proteins, nucleic acids make up the most important macromolecules; each is found in abundance in all living things, where they function in encoding, transmitting and expressing genetic information...
and protein
Protein
Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...
sequences, as they ensure that the representation of every nucleotide
Nucleotide
Nucleotides are molecules that, when joined together, make up the structural units of RNA and DNA. In addition, nucleotides participate in cellular signaling , and are incorporated into important cofactors of enzymatic reactions...
or amino acid
Amino acid
Amino acids are molecules containing an amine group, a carboxylic acid group and a side-chain that varies between different amino acids. The key elements of an amino acid are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen...
occupies the same amount of space. Alignment of the letters makes it easier to compare different sequences visually.