Does anyone know how to caculate the vertical space of a passage in inches? I'm trying to figure this question out, "If a passage set 10/12 has 96 lines, how many inches of vertical space will it occupy? Show computations.
Twelve points is a pica, or one-sixth of an inch, so 96 lines / 6 = 16 inches.
Alternatively, you could say, there are 72 points in an inch (digitally speaking; in traditional printing measurements it varies a tiny bit--see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_(typography) ), so 12 * 96 / 72 = 16 inches.
How would I know how many character to delete if I had to. If a passage 920 characters in length including spacing, is to fit into a space 16 picas wide by 4 inches long and is to be set in 10 point type leaded 2 points (10 on 12) how many characters would I have to delete. I really do not understand how to do this, I've tried the Chicago Manual of Style and still I'm clueless.
You would need to know the characters per pica number for that font at that size. Some of the type specimen programs that produce sample sheets for fonts have an option that shows the cpp for standard sizes (8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 pt, for instance). Spaces are not counted as characters for cpp, just characters that print.
The general calculation is
cpp x width in picas x number of lines = number of characters
If you are using a font that has 3.02 chars per pica at 10 pt, the calculation would be:
3.02 x 16 x 24 = ~1,160 characters
In this case, you would not need to delete any text.
A rough cpp can be figured by filling a text frame with text at the size you want (lead doesn't matter for this calculation) and using Quark or InDesign's info function to see how many characters are in that frame. Then use a modification of the above calculation to figure out that font's cpp at that size:
number of chars / number of lines / line width in picas = chars per pica
The cpp is always an approximation because word length and hyphenation affect how many characters of the real final text fit in that space.