English

English is a body type size, standardized at 14 points (approximately 4.9 millimetres), that sits in the middle band of the traditional metal type scale. It emerged as a working compromise between pica (12 point), which was tight for extended body text, and great primer (18 point), which was considered too large for most job work and book composition. Before the point system was formalized in the 19th century, English was one of several named sizes that printers used to identify type by appearance and common use rather than precise measurement.

The name reflects the old practice in English printing of identifying typefaces and sizes by their country of origin or their place in a hierarchical naming convention. British printers used "English" for this size for generations before metrication arrived; it occupied a practical middle ground in a compositor's type case. The size was useful for newspapers, pamphlets, and mixed composition where legibility mattered but space was limited. Its position between pica and great primer made it a natural choice for display work on smaller jobs or for body text when pica was deemed too cramped.

By the early 20th century, the rise of the point system (where 72 points equal one inch) made type sizes mathematically exact and language-independent. English became a historical term; 14-point type is now simply called by its point value. In hot metal composition, 14-point slugs were cast on the linotype and monotype machines, and foundry type in English size was still ordered for hand composition well into the phototype era. The size saw regular use in jobbing printing, where the need to fill a certain depth on a page without wasting expensive metal drove the choice of intermediate sizes.

English size type is rarely requested by name in contemporary work because digital typesetting, variable scaling, and web-based design have eliminated the need for discrete named sizes. However, the term persists in the vocabulary of letterpress practitioners, antiquarian book collectors, and historians of printing. A printer encountering the term in a 19th-century trade catalogue or foundry specimen book should recognize it as equivalent to modern 14-point type, though the actual size of the character could vary slightly depending on the typeface's individual metrics and the founder who cast it.