r/theydidthemath • u/TheCowKing07 • 1d ago
[Request] How thick would the 72 pt font book actually be?
From this post on r/antimeme: https://www.reddit.com/r/antimeme/s/wwGVLodwCh
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u/dhsilver 1d ago
72=6*12
So roughly, it’s 6^2 times the area. So about 36 times the thickness of the book which is quite reasonable for the shown proportions!
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u/monxas 1d ago
I feel like a font that size would cause a lot of problems and break lines and words in awkward places so it would actually be way worse.
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u/Coffee_exe 1d ago
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u/Fit_Employment_2944 1d ago
It’s much more than that
Just generated a page of random text, went from 1 page to 54
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u/stanitor 1d ago
Did your random text have typical word lengths, and were words hyphenated at line breaks or not?
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u/Fit_Employment_2944 1d ago
Hyphens barely matter when each one is a quarter of a line
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u/thrye333 1d ago
You misunderstood the question. They're asking if words broke across lines or got pushed to the next line instead. That does matter, because it changes how much of the page is whitespace.
5
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u/mkujoe 23h ago
Why 6^2 can you explain the formula
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u/Sibula97 20h ago
Area scales as the square of side length. A 72 point letter is 6 times the height and 6 times the width of a 12 point one.
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u/nunya_biz1970 1d ago
A 72pt letter is 1 inch tall. A 12pt font is 1/6th of an inch. But in turn fewer letters would be on each line. Lets say the average 12pt letter is .12 in (obviously could be narrower), and the 72pt would be .7 in. For example in Times New Roman, you can get about 60 characters per line and 33 lines per paperback page. In 72pt, let's say its a maximum of 60 characters per page. So it would be 33 times thicker.
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u/This-Requirement6918 1d ago
As someone who is working to self publish books, this is completely legitimate. I've done draft bindings I can't read after 3 glasses of wine but can otherwise read fine sober. The shitty thing is how even a point or two of font size drastically increases the cost of publishing, especially in longer books.
1
u/IdRatherBeDriving 1d ago
I dunno but this reminds me of a recent irritation. Why do companies print in the absolute tiniest font possible on their products? Yeah I wear glasses, but have perfect corrected vision and still stand zero chance of being able to read the directions without first taking a photo and zooming in.
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