Design Nomenclature / Type
Oldstyle figures
Also called text figures, non-lining figures, lowercase figures, onum
- Type
- 2D
This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.
Numerals with ascenders and descenders — 6 and 8 rise, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9 drop, the rest sit at x-height. They carry the same rhythm as lowercase, so a date or a page reference stops shouting inside a sentence. The OpenType feature is onum.
In practice
Right in running prose, wrong in a table: their varying heights defeat the column. Pair onum with pnum for text, lnum with tnum for data, and don't let one default cover both.
Not to be confused with
- Lining figuresNumerals of uniform height, aligned on the baseline and reaching to cap height or a little below. The default in most faces since the nineteenth century, and the right choice beside capitals, in tables, and in interfaces. Beside lowercase they read as slightly loud, which is what oldstyle figures were kept for.
- Tabular figuresNumerals cast to a single advance width so digits stack in columns and a 1 occupies the same space as a 0 — the OpenType tnum feature, and what any table of figures needs. Proportional figures (pnum) give each digit its natural width, which is better in prose and unusable in a column.