NOTATIO

I'm trying to arrive at a good point of departure for how tall capitalized letters should be with respect to staff space size. I've been measuring but finding no consistency. Any opinions?

I’ve found that it’s more about x-height (or lower case letter height) than capital letter height. The value that always looks the most cohesive to me is an x-height around 1-staff space. There’s definitely some wiggle room there, a bit more (larger font size) still works well, a bit less (smaller font size) is also ok if space is tight.

Wescott wrote: 09 Feb 2026, 19:47 I'm trying to arrive at a good point of departure for how tall capitalized letters should be with respect to staff space size. I've been measuring but finding no consistency. Any opinions?

Would you give a few examples of the good, bad and ugly?

The last time I investigated this, the standard I came up with was approximately 2 spaces for capital letters. In the image below, you can see that the letters fit inside the 2 spaces without overlapping the staff lines.

Magnus Johansson wrote: 10 Feb 2026, 10:05

Wescott wrote: 09 Feb 2026, 19:47 I'm trying to arrive at a good point of departure for how tall capitalized letters should be with respect to staff space size. I've been measuring but finding no consistency. Any opinions?

Would you give a few examples of the good, bad and ugly?

I would have to scan them.