En

Also called en quad, nut

Type
2D

This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.

Half an em. Its practical residue is the dash: the en dash spans ranges and compound relations (1914–18, the Paris–Lyon line), the em dash breaks a sentence — like this. The old compositors' names, mutton and nut, existed precisely because "em" and "en" are indistinguishable when spoken across a noisy room.

A two-column comparison headed "Width, as a fraction of the type size". The left column is titled Em and reads: one type size wide, the em dash breaking a sentence. The right is titled En and reads: half an em, the en dash spanning a range — 1914–18, the Paris–Lyon line. The two dashes appear only inside that prose; the figure states the ratio rather than measuring it.

Not to be confused with

EmA relative unit equal to the current type size: at 16px, one em is 16px. It is not the width of an M and never was a measurement of any glyph — it is the height of the body the type is set on, which historically was square at the M's cast width. Every other type metric is expressed as a fraction of it.

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Related Confused with

Not to be confused with

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