What is a 12 point font?
A font is 12 points high if the distance between the baselines of two adjacent lines of (unleaded) text is 12 points. The pointsize is not based on the sizes of any of the glyphs of the font. Back when fonts were made out of metal, the pointsize of the font was the height of the metal slugs used for that font. In some sense this is not a very good measure of the size of a font (some fonts may allow more room for accents or ascenders or descenders than others meaning that the height of the actual glyphs will be smaller). There is also a measurement scheme based on the x-height of the glyphs. In England and the US a point has traditionally meant the pica point (1/72.27th of an inch), while in Europe the point has been the didot point (1/67.54th of an inch). The Europeans have a slightly larger point, but the glyphs of English and European fonts appear the same size. English does not use accents (except in very rare cases) while most European languages do, and the slight increase in the s
