The pica is a typographic unit of measure corresponding to approximately 1⁄6 of an inch, or from 1⁄68 to 1⁄73 of a foot.

[3] The pica is also used in measuring the font capacity and is applied in the process of copyfitting.

[4] The font length is measured there by the number of characters per pica (cpp).

For example, an 11-point font (like Helvetica) may have 2.4 cpp,[5][6] thus a 5-inch (30-pica) line of a usual octavo-sized (6×8 in) book page would contain around 72 characters (including spaces).

Similar tables exist as well with which one can estimate the number of characters per pica knowing the lower-case alphabet length.