Text height with respect to staff space standards
Text height with respect to staff space standards
I'm trying to arrive at a good point of departure for how tall capitalized letters should be with respect to staff space size. I've been measuring but finding no consistency. Any opinions?
You can check out the first installment of my Orchestration In Depth series here:
https://books.apple.com/us/book/orchest ... 6502035004
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https://books.apple.com/us/book/orchest ... 6502035004
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Re: Text height with respect to staff space standards
I’ve found that it’s more about x-height (or lower case letter height) than capital letter height. The value that always looks the most cohesive to me is an x-height around 1-staff space. There’s definitely some wiggle room there, a bit more (larger font size) still works well, a bit less (smaller font size) is also ok if space is tight.
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Re: Text height with respect to staff space standards
Would you give a few examples of the good, bad and ugly?Wescott wrote: 09 Feb 2026, 19:47 I'm trying to arrive at a good point of departure for how tall capitalized letters should be with respect to staff space size. I've been measuring but finding no consistency. Any opinions?
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Re: Text height with respect to staff space standards
The last time I investigated this, the standard I came up with was approximately 2 spaces for capital letters. In the image below, you can see that the letters fit inside the 2 spaces without overlapping the staff lines.
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Re: Text height with respect to staff space standards
I would have to scan them.Magnus Johansson wrote: 10 Feb 2026, 10:05Would you give a few examples of the good, bad and ugly?Wescott wrote: 09 Feb 2026, 19:47 I'm trying to arrive at a good point of departure for how tall capitalized letters should be with respect to staff space size. I've been measuring but finding no consistency. Any opinions?
You can check out the first installment of my Orchestration In Depth series here:
https://books.apple.com/us/book/orchest ... 6502035004
______________________________________________
https://books.apple.com/us/book/orchest ... 6502035004
______________________________________________