What is meant by “5% coverage” in printer terminology?
5% coverage refers to the percentage of the surface area of the paper which is actually covered with ink or toner in a typical page of text. It refers specifically to the actual characters printed, not the spaces between them or any blank space which may be part of character itself. For example, the space inside the letter “O” does not count because therre is no ink or toner there, just as the blank space inside the top half of the number “9” would not count. It’s not how much of the paper the text occupies, for example a couple paragraphs could take up half a page but that would not be 50% coverage because the ink or toner is not covering 50% of the paper. Basically it means that if you could lift all the ink or toner used to print a full page of text then redistribute it into a solid block of exactly the same thickness as it was originally printed, that block would cover 5% of the paper.
