Refers to
fonts in which each
character has the same width. The opposite of monospacing is
proportional spacing, in which different characters have different widths. For example, in a proportionally spaced font, the letter
o would be wider than the letter
i. Proportionally spaced fonts look more professional, but monospaced fonts are often superior for tabular
data because the uniform width of each character makes
alignment of
columns easier.
Most printed matter, including this book, uses proportional spacing.