Point (typography)

In typography, a point is the smallest unit of measure, it being the subdivision of the pica. It is commonly abbreviated as pt. The traditional printer's point from the era of hot metal typesetting and presswork varied between 0.18 and 0.4 mm depending on various definitions of the foot.

Today, the traditional point has been supplanted by the desktop publishing point (also called the PostScript point), which has been rounded to an even 72 points to the inch (1 point = 0.3527 mm). In either system, there are 12 points to the pica.