What is a monospaced font?

What is a monospaced font and why are they used for programming?

The monospace

Monospaced means – as the word says – that each glyph (letters, signs, symbols etc.) have the same horizontal space. Other terms are fixed-pitch, fixed-width, or non-proportional. The origins of monospaced fonts are the mechanical typewriters of the 19th century, a time before computers were even built. Monospaced fonts share the characteristic that letters like M, W, m and w often look crammed while letters like i and l must be designed as wide a possible to fill the available space. To achieve this, serifs are added to some glyphs as they occupy the space. These and other constraints make the design of highly legible coding fonts a difficult task.

TODO: Maybe the image should have a grid showing alignment of the characters in different scenarios

Code

Why is a monospaced font important? Your code is easier to read if the letters are not just aligned horizontally (as every text is) but also vertically. This allows you to go through the code faster, makes it easier to compare lines and most importantly structure your code in a grid your eye can navigate fast through. MonoLisa is designed espacially for this task, using other techniques like open forms and terminals (a typographic term for the ‘ending’ of letter shape) and its unique shapes to balance out the constraints of being monospaced.

Conclusion

If you want to know more about the way MonoLisa makes programming easier please follow the link: more information can be found at MonoLisa website.