"25.4 mm worm" just doesn't have the same ring to it
I know that for years there has been talk of switching the U.S. over to the metric system. Until I started doing a little research, I never realized that almost every industrialized nation except the United States uses the metric system. Whether you are for it, against it, or don't care one way or the other, chances are that if you do desktop publishing you will run into those funny little "meter measures" at some point.
When I originally published this article I said that both the United States and Canada were not using the metric system. Oops! Some Canadian readers set me straight on that one. Yes, Canada uses metric measures, or as one reader wrote, "Up here, we buy by the liter, gram, and kilogram, we travel by the meter and kilometer, we roast and freeze(!) in degrees Celsius, we get precipitation in millimeters, and we have forest fires that consume hectares of trees and brushland." They do however, use the North American standards for paper ("letter", "legal" etc.) rather than the ISO standards.
If you are from a country where metrics are the standard unit of measure, you may wonder what all the fuss is about. No doubt about it, dividing and multiplying by 10 is easier: .05 meters = 5 cm = 50 mm and one-fourth of 220 mm is 55 mm or 5.5 cm but one-fourth of 8.25 inches is... hmmm... 2.0625 inches (quick, is .0625 = 1/4, 1/5, 1/8, or 3/16?). But for some of us, it's kind of like learning another language. English is tough enough.
Of inches, millimeters, picas, and points
If you've done desktop publishing for any length of time or if you come from a traditional printing or graphic arts field then you already know that desktop publishing involves many different types of measurement systems. The inch and millimeter are only two of several possible units of measure.
You may have noticed the different units of measurement available in many desktop publishing programs — whether they are measurements for page layout, setting type, or for printing. Until recently I didn't fully appreciate all these options. There are still many I don't use and you may not either. But if you understand why and what these measurements mean you will inevitably improve your own desktop publishing skills — and possibly learn a new and better way to create your desktop documents.
How we measure in desktop publishing
- General Measurements using the metric system (for non-metric users)
- Measuring Type using points, x-height, and caps height
- Page Layout Measurements using picas and points
- Measuring Paper using ISO and North American sheet sizes
- Measuring Resolution using SPI, PPI, DPI, and LPI
Desktop Publishing Tasks > Intermediate Tasks > Measurement Systems
Metric | Type | Page Layout | Paper | Resolution
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