[ineuw]

I need to calculate the length of sentences set with Arial 10 point, Normal weight. Is there a table which lists the width of the ANSI character set per a given font and point size? Or, perhaps there is a formula I can use?

I am grateful for any help given.

ineuw

[steveb]

This is fairly technical, and I think it deals more with analysing already printed texts rather than predicting requirements (but perhaps that's what you need).
Statistics - Sentence and Word Length
Also, it helps to know what the normal letter frequency for various kinds of text is in English (or in any other language, for that matter). There's a mnemonic ETAOIN SHRDLU for English, which sounds like one of Lovecraft's Lesser Gods, but shows that E is the most used letter - you knew that - T the second-most frequent, A the third and so on. There's a useful table here.
Letter frequencies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My Golden Rule is that sentence length should be between 2 and three alphabet-lengths long. At least as long as this
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwx yz
and no longer than this
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwx yzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

As for calculating actual sentence length in any given font, I'm afraid I haven't come across anything like that. But the quick way of doing it is simply to set a representative paragraph or two in English (ipsum lorem is no good) and measure it yourself. Maybe you'll be the one to create the table!

[ineuw]

Thanks so much for your direction. This is a challenge that would help when having to print data in a pre-defined area. I downloaded a trial font designer and learning a little about font design. There is some promise but it will take awhile, since this is not my only concern.

Thanks again