Other Units of Measure

International industrial standards are relatively new. With such a long and checkered history, it’s not surprising that typesetting has accumulated a variety of measures that have never been universally accepted or that have faded away as technologies have evolved. Some of them—which may still appear in various typesetting and page layout programs—are listed here.

Ciceros

In the eighteenth century, the French created a scheme for measuring type that’s now called the didot (pronounced DEE-dough) system, named after a French printing family. It’s based on the didot point, 12 of which make up a cicero (this name varies from country to country in Europe). A didot point is slightly larger than a modern PostScript point, so that 15 ciceros equal about 16 picas. The didot system is still in use in Europe to some extent.