This historic display size consists of a metal body exactly twice the height of a standard pica. It serves as a standard dimension for secondary headlines, subheads, and small poster text. Because a standard pica is twelve points, this size translates perfectly to twenty-four points in standardized typographic measurement.
The client wants the subheads larger, so bump them up from great primer to two-line pica.
Two-line pica is one of the most common display sizes because it perfectly matches the height of two lines of standard twelve-point body text, making justification mathematically simple.
Related terms
Pica
A standard typographic unit of measurement equal to 12 points or approximately one-sixth of an inch.
two-line English
A traditional metal type size equivalent to twenty-eight points.
Two-line double pica
A historic metal type size measuring approximately forty-four points.
Great primer
A traditional type size measuring roughly 18 points.