Windows – version of the Arial or Tahoma font with monospaced digits and spaces

truetype-fontswindows

The digits in the Arial font supplied with Windows are monospaced, in that they each take up the same horizontal space, but they seem to have neglected to provide a "monospaced" version of the space character. This means that you can't format a column of digits right-justified in (say) 12 spaces and have the right-hand edge be aligned. For example:

         1
        12
       123
      1234
     12345
   1234567
  12345678
 123456789
1234567890

works because the font used for code examples has spaces the same width as digits. This however doesn't work if the same text is displayed in Arial (I can't demonstrate because I can't figure out how to defeat SU's reformatting at the moment!).

It just so happens that with Tahoma 8 point you can cheat because a space is exactly half the number of pixels as a digit, but that is messy and very specific.

Best Answer

Try using a figure space which should be the same width as a digit even in a proportional font:

A figure space is a typographic unit equal to the size of a single typographic figure (numeral or letter), minus leading. Its size can fluctuate somewhat depending on which font is being used. In fonts with monospaced digits, it is equal to the width of one digit.

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