Duospaced font

Visual comparison of a duospaced CJK font (Migu 2M) versus a monospaced font (Consolas).

A duospaced font (also called a duospace font) is a fixed-width font whose letters and characters occupy either of two integer multiples of a specified, fixed horizontal space. Traditionally, this means either a single or double character width,[1] although the term has also been applied to fonts using fixed character widths with another simple ratio between them.[2]

These dual character widths are also referred to as half-width and full-width, where a full-width character occupies double the width of a half-width character. This contrasts with variable-width fonts, where the letters and spacings have more than two different widths. And, unlike monospaced fonts, this means a character can occupy up to two effective character widths instead of a single character width. This extra horizontal space allows for the accommodation of wider glyphs, such as large ideographs, that cannot reasonably fit into the single character width of strictly uniform, monospaced font.

  1. ^ "Font spacing characteristics". IBM Knowledge Center. IBM Corporation. 1990. Retrieved 2017-09-17.
  2. ^ Abhimanyu Ghoshal. "iA Writer's 'Duospace' Font: A Better Flow While Retaining The Benefits Of 'Monospace'". The Next Web.