Pitch is the number of (monospaced) letters, numbers and spaces in of running text, that is, characters per inch (cpi), measured horizontally.
The pitch was most often used as a measurement of the size of typewriter fonts as well as those of impact printers used with computers.
The most widespread fonts in typewriters are 10 and 12 pitch, called Pica and Elite, respectively. Both fonts have the same x-height, yielding six lines per vertical inch. There may be other font styles with various width: condensed or compressed (17âÂÂ20 cpi), italic or bold (10 pitch), enlarged (5âÂÂ8 cpi), and so on.