When engraving do spaces count as letters?
Well, that depends on the circumstances of the question.
For most engravers who charge per per character or letter for their engraving, spaces do not count.
If you are counting letters to fill a limited engraving area such as putting an engraving on one of our door knockers, spaces do count. A space takes up space so to say. They use up some of that valuable horizontal engraving area just like all the other characters do.
The actual effects of the space depends on a couple factors. The primary one being the font used. Some fonts are more condensed than others. They will take up less horizontal space per letter than a font that is not condensed. Another factor is the letters being used to make up the engraving. Some take more horizontal space than others. An example would be to use your word processor and type a series of ten “i’s” next to a series of ten “A’s”. The difference in the length of the lines is what we are talking about.
The font chosen combines with the actual selection of letters numbers and spaces making up the engraving determines how much horizontal room is needed. This is an important factor for engraving our door knockers.
On our site we have specified an allowable number of characters per line that can be engraved on our door knockers. This number is rather general. We do not know what font will be selected or what letters will be used before an order is placed on the web site.
When asked we can usually get a few more letters than we specify on the site. Especially if a condensed font is used. We can also vary the space between the letters as well as stretch and shrink lines with our computer driven engraving system. Any of these tricks taken to extremes is not very attractive. They must be used conservatively to remain a quality engraving.
