What is the difference between proportional and non-proportional fonts?
A non-proportional, or “monospaced”, or “typewriter” font, is one where all of the letters take up exactly the same amount of space on screen: a capital “W”, a lower-case “i” and a space are all equally wide. The Courier family of fonts is commonly used for this. A proportional font is one where each letter takes up just the amount of space it needs, so that a capital “W” is much wider than a small “i”. Unfortunately, the different sizes of the letters in different proportional fonts means that it’s not possible to line up letters consistently: a “W” may be equivalent to three “i”s in one proportional font, and to four “i”s in another. This means, for example, that it is not possible to use a proportional font to format plain text tables or poetry correctly — lining up the spaces and words using one proportional font will cause it to look skewed using another. You should always look at PG texts in a non-proportional font, even if you prefer to work mostly using a proportional font, bec
A non-proportional, or “monospaced”, or “typewriter” font, is one where all of the letters take up exactly the same amount of space on screen: a capital “W”, a lower-case “i” and a space are all equally wide. The Courier family of fonts is commonly used for this. A proportional font is one where each letter takes up just the amount of space it needs, so that a capital “W” is much wider than a small “i”. Unfortunately, the different sizes of the letters in different proportional fonts means that it’s not possible to line up letters consistently: a “W” may be equivalent to three “i”s in one proportional font, and to four “i”s in another. This means, for example, that it is not possible to use a proportional font to format plain text tables or poetry correctly–lining up the spaces and words using one proportional font will cause it to look skewed using another. You should always look at PG texts in a non-proportional font, even if you prefer to work mostly using a proportional font, beca
