FWIW, these are “old style” numerals, and there are also versions of Fira Sans with “tabular” numerals that are all the same height (e.g., in LaTeX, you can pick either one).
they’re called lowercase numbers and they’re designed to look good in paragraph text. for example if you’re reading this comment, mentioning the year 1997 suddenly puts four full height characters as if I typed one word in all caps, while in lowercase numbers it would look more like if I typed the word iggy (1 is x height while 9 and 7 have descenders like g and y).
they’re not designed to be used in math or for longer number sequences. for that you have the full height (uppercase) numbers that most typeface should still have.
0123456789 in lowercase have the same heights as oizgjpbyfq - just as random as that word’s letter heights are. which is not random at all, you’re just not supposed to use it like that.
idk what you mean by universal; this is a typographical choice. the only reason you see more uppercase numbers everywhere is because of typewriters and by extension computers. I don’t think people make a point of lining numbers up with cap height in handwriting.
Text looks good, but man the Number hight looks cursed and kinda random.
FWIW, these are “old style” numerals, and there are also versions of Fira Sans with “tabular” numerals that are all the same height (e.g., in LaTeX, you can pick either one).
they’re called lowercase numbers and they’re designed to look good in paragraph text. for example if you’re reading this comment, mentioning the year 1997 suddenly puts four full height characters as if I typed one word in all caps, while in lowercase numbers it would look more like if I typed the word iggy (1 is x height while 9 and 7 have descenders like g and y).
they’re not designed to be used in math or for longer number sequences. for that you have the full height (uppercase) numbers that most typeface should still have.
0123456789 in lowercase have the same heights as oizgjpbyfq - just as random as that word’s letter heights are. which is not random at all, you’re just not supposed to use it like that.
Oh that makes sense, thanks for the information. Still would not want to use something thats not universal.
idk what you mean by universal; this is a typographical choice. the only reason you see more uppercase numbers everywhere is because of typewriters and by extension computers. I don’t think people make a point of lining numbers up with cap height in handwriting.
Their shape is beautiful (from 3 to 9) but why were they not written on the same line?
lowercase numbers, check my comment above if you’re interested
It appears that the middle line crosses the centre of mass.