characters per inch
characters per inch noun: a unit of measurement of the number of typographic characters that fit on a one inch line of printed type. This unit is mainly used to specify font sizes that have the same width for each character (monospaced), however it may also be used to give an average for fonts with characters of varying widths.
Noun
characters per inch pl (plural only, abbreviation cpi)
- A unit of measurement of the number of typographic characters that fit on a one inch line of printed type. This unit is mainly used to specify font sizes that have the same width for each character (monospaced), however it may also be used to give an average for fonts with characters of varying widths.
- Please use a type that is 10 characters per inch.
- A unit of measurement of the number of characters per inch ("linear packing density") when storing data on certain types of magnetic media or tape, used to measure storage density that the encoding medium possesses.
Forms of characters per inch
| abbreviation | cpi |
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Questions about characters per inch
- What does characters per inch mean?
- Characters per inch means a unit of measurement of the number of typographic characters that fit on a one inch line of printed type. This unit is mainly used to specify font sizes that have the same width for each character (monospaced), however it may also be used to give an average for fonts with characters of varying widths.
- What part of speech is characters per inch?
- Characters per inch is a noun.
Words near characters per inch in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: characters per inch (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “characters per inch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/characters_per_inch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.