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Thomas Phinney
Personal blog · thomasphinney.comdesignwriting
Thomas Phinney writes Phinney on Fonts, a personal blog at thomasphinney.com about design and writing. Since 2012, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 8 times, most often “Saving $400M printing cost from font change? Not exactly...”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-03, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Thomas Phinney's post on CSS units ("Death to px, long live ch") is linked. One commenter adds the typographic history of the em, based on the height of the lead sorts used in printing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
the Phinney-us Blog on Typography & Text
Most-linked posts?
- Saving $400M printing cost from font change? Not exactly...2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-03-29
What Hacker News says?
I know this is an irrelevant factoid and literally does not matter at all, but it's a tad more meta that just em = font size. Prepare to be bored: The em unit/point size in typography was based on the height of the lead sorts you were using. [0] (A sort is basically a little lead stamp with a single letter jutting out on the front face. [1]) Its almost always larger that any dimenion of the actual character, since t…
Comment linking /2011/03/point-size/
on “Death to px, long live ch”Submitted Saving $400M printing cost from font change? Not exactly... as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted Will Calibri leave Pakistan sans Sharif? (2017) as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Do companies get sued for using fonts illegally? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Point Size and the Em Square: Not What People Think as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Variable Fonts Will Succeed as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Save $400M printing cost from font change? Not so fast… as a story · 1 points
HN discussion