In typography, a measurement of the length of the 26-letter Latin alphabet. The alphabet used is the lowercase a through z for any particular typeface. By comparing the length of these letters when set normally with standard letterspacing (not condensed or expanded) in the same size for different typefaces, one can evaluate comparative "mass." A typeface with a low alphabet length would set more characters in the same space than a typeface with a high alphabet length. This same relationship is also expressed as characters per pica, the number of characters that fit in one pica.
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