Pica

With typography, pica is a unit of measurement that is approximately equal to 1/6th of an inch (0.16604-inches for the American pica, to be exact). In print, the pica is denoted by a lowercase "p," whereas, with CSS (cascading style sheets), it's represented by lowercase "p" and "c" letters because "p" represents paragraph.

The pica can further divide into 12 smaller units called points. For example, the measurement 4p3 reads as 4 picas and 3 points, or 4 1/4 picas.

CSS example using pica

The example code below shows the pica (denoted as pc) used with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). As you can see in the notes, it sets the font size to 3.5 picas and the line-height to 7 picas.

<!-- CSS -->
<!-- Sets the paragraph font size to 3.5 picas. -->
<!-- Sets the paragraph line-height to 7 picas. -->
<style>
p {
  font-size: 3.5pc;
  line-height: 7pc;
}
</style>

Computer abbreviations, Font size, Measurement, Printer terms, Typography terms