A font is essentially the design for a set of characters. It's the combination of typeface and design characteristics such as size, pitch and spacing. The height of characters in a font is measured in points, each point being approximately 1/72 inch. The width is measured by pitch, which refers to how many characters can fit in an inch. Common pitch values are 10 and 12. A font is said to be fixed pitch if every character has the same width (this type of font is also called monospace). If the widths vary depending on the shape of the character, it is called a proportional font.