emerald

In the metal type era, an emerald was a specific body size used in letterpress printing, standardized at 6½ points. This placed it between nonpareil (6 point) and minion (7 point) in the traditional English type scale. Like all metal type sizes, the emerald's name derived from a historical specimen or foundry designation rather than any logical sequence, reflecting the ad-hoc development of typography before metrication.

The emerald saw practical use in book work, pamphlets, and commercial printing where a size between the smaller nonpareil and the more generous minion offered a useful compromise. The half-point increment itself was an oddity in foundry practice: most standard sizes came in full-point steps. Manufacturing a distinct 6½-point character set required separate matrices and molds at the type foundry, making it a specialized offering rather than a stock item.

Why the name disappeared

The emerald did not survive the transition to phototypesetting and digital composition. As designers and compositors gained the ability to set type at any increment, 12.5 points, 14.3 points, arbitrary sizes, the fixed point system and its named sizes became obsolete. Printers no longer needed to stock or specify by historical names; they could simply specify any point size.

Today the term appears only in historical type specimen books and foundry catalogs from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Understanding it matters chiefly when reproducing historical documents, identifying old printed materials, or working in historical letter-press revival. The name itself has joined other type sizes like pearl (5 point) and brevier (8 point) as vocabulary from a lost manufacturing era.