Thesis body font size 12 bp

Question

Similar questions have been asked but with no conclusive answers. How do I set my body font size to be equivalent to MS Word 12, which is required by my college. 12 pt in LaTeX is equal to size 10 in Word. The font type is Times New Roman.

Assuming Word uses “big points”, size 12 would be 12.045pt. I don't think the difference can be appreciated with a ruler. The difference is 0.016mm and 2/100 of a millimeter is quite tiny, isn't it? — egreg, Apr 05 '17 at 09:42
You also have to consider that different fonts look (and even are) differently sized for the same number. Thus a comparison is only valid if you state which font you're using (and use the same in both) — Chris H, Apr 05 '17 at 10:30
@egreg Well the asker seems to be telling us that the difference is appreciable, in that the thing that LaTeX calls 12pt looks like the thing that Word calls 10pt. (Having said that, I always find that 12pt in LaTeX looks like a children's book so if the asker is supposed to write their thesis in something even bigger, *shudder*.) — David Richerby, Apr 05 '17 at 11:02
@DavidRicherby Actually, the size in LaTeX is the size in Word (taking into account the slight difference between pt and bp). However, some of the widely-used LaTeX fonts have large glyph sizes. For example, Heuristica has x-height 490, but Adobe UtopiaStd (not TeX Utopia) has x-height 460. Use Heuristica in place of UptopiaStd, and it will look bigger at the same point size. — , Apr 05 '17 at 14:36
In the real world, the size of the text will probably change more than the difference between 12pt and 12bp simply by photocopying the document - or because the paper size changes with humidity. And if you want to investigate this using PDFs, first check out exactly how your software handles rasterization and font hinting, otherwise you make any useful conclusions about what you see. — alephzero, Apr 05 '17 at 15:47
@RobtA It's all very well explaining how two things are the same (disregarding the imperceptible difference between pt and bp) but that directly contradicts the asker's observations about what's happening with their document. It seems that everybody is focusing on telling the asker that their problem doesn't exist, rather than trying to figure out what's going on. — David Richerby, Apr 05 '17 at 15:54
@DavidRicherby I understand that. But the OP wrote that 12 points in LaTeX is equal to size 10 in Word. Is that a factual observation, or is he repeating a rumor? Is it really the identical font, in both cases? Perhaps the PDF viewer is presenting a smaller-scaled image than Word presents? I have never seen 12=10, and I gather than other responders have not seen it either. Note that there is no MWE whereby we could try to reproduce the problem (many of us have Word, too). — , Apr 05 '17 at 16:52

score 12 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:34

12

The difference is negligible.

1 bp = 1.00374 pt (from a conversion table) so 12 pt would convert to 11.9553 bp, not 10 bp.

\RequirePackage{fix-cm}
\documentclass{standalone}
\begin{document}
\fontsize{12bp}{18bp}\selectfont H\fontsize{12pt}{18pt}\selectfont H
\end{document}

\RequirePackage{fix-cm} is needed per egreg’s comment, to prevent TeX from choosing the nearest standard size font file (12 pt in this case).

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:34

Community

1

answered Apr 05 '17 at 09:21

lblb

3,454

7

You'd see a difference if you put \RequirePackage{fix-cm} before \documentclass. Anyway, the conversion is the other way around: 1bp is larger than 1pt: 1bp=1.00374pt. – egreg Apr 05 '17 at 09:36
@egreg: Thanks, corrected. I tested it as you said and there is the tiniest difference, only visible with help lines. – lblb Apr 05 '17 at 09:46
1

In this case the difference appears to be bigger because of snapping to the raster. – egreg Apr 05 '17 at 11:52

score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 05 '17 at 14:31

I did an experiment.

First I created a document with LibreOffice (sorry no Word on my machines)

As you see, the font is Times New Roman at size 12.

Next I printed on a PDF and cropped it. Finally, I wrote this LaTeX file

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{newtxtext}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}[b]{l}
abcdef\\
abcdef\\
abcdef
\end{tabular}\includegraphics{abcdefLO-crop}

\end{document}

and the result is

Apart from the different leading, the result seems comparable.

After all, if we measure 12bp (where 72bp = 1in), we get 12.045pt and this corresponds to a difference of 0.02mm if 12pt is used.

Thesis body font size 12 bp

2 Answers2