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Postal Standards

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7. Printing


Table of Contents

7.1  Printing  

Preferred Methods

Machine-print or type in black on a white background


Recommended Fonts and Sizes

Fonts and Sizes for Both O/S and S/L Additional Fonts and Sizes for S/L Only
10–12 11–12 10 10–12
Copy Pica
Elite
Pica
Lotus Line Draw,
Ms Line Draw
Courier
Courier New
Arial Alpha Gothic,
Helvetica,
News Gothic
Univers (W1)
Universal
OCR B special font in only one size.


What to Avoid

Decorative fonts
Script fonts
Italics
Underlining
Bold


Line Spacing

Maintain a constant distance between lines of at least 0.5 mm and not more than one blank line.

In determining the space between lines, measure from the lowest point of a line to the top of the next line. Measure from the bottom extenders of letters such as y and g.


7.2  Character Requirements  

Size

Print all characters in the lines containing address information in a font of the same height.


Number

Show on each line at least the number of characters required to cover a length of 7.68 mm. At 10 CPI (characters per inch), three characters will meet this requirement.
Limit the number of characters in one line to preferably less than 30, but no more than 40.
Limit the number of characters in the address on an oversize item to 100.


Legibility

Characters should:

be clear, with no smudges and fill ins
have strokes with consistent thickness.



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