(The font used here is Warnock Pro, by Robert Slimbach).Īs you might suspect, capital or lining numerals should be used with capital letters, and lowercase or old style numerals with lowercase letters. Many fonts also include lowercase versions of symbols like the percent sign and currency symbols to go with the old style figures.Ī font might include up to four different styles of numerals. This means that a font might include up to four different styles of numerals-monospace lining (usually the default), proportional lining, monospace old style, and proportional old style. Monospace means that all the numbers (glyph plus sidebearings) have the same width proportional means that they only take up the space they need. Numerals also come in different widths-monospace (or tabular) and proportional. Some type designers refer to lining and old style numerals as lining and old style figures-this means the exact same thing as numerals. Lowercase, or old style numerals, are rarer, but still common in professional typesetting. Capital, or lining numerals, are the type most people are most familiar with today, probably because they are almost always the default. It’s not commonly known that numerals come in both capital and lowercase forms. Perhaps because of ease of access, Arabic numerals are somewhat overused, but they are mandatory for writing out numbers with more than two digits.

Arabic (or more accurately, Indian) numerals are single character numerical glyphs like ‘1’ or ‘6’.

Arabic numerals font