What Is an EMQUAD?

Numerous clients have asked this question since our inception in 1988, when we were founded as a publisher of specialty advertising. Besides our till roll business, for instance, we published ads in a U.S. Customs Form booklet distributed to inbound airline passengers. We thought it appropriate, therefore, to use a printing term for our corporate name. We were also looking for a globally unique name to register and EMQUAD fit the bill. An "em quad" is a quad of type the width of the letter "m". In the pre-computer typesetting age, that is, from c.1450 to 1980 or so, movable lead type was cast in "quads," angular bits of metal with heads and feet. The head of a blank quad was a flat square resembling the lead-grey square of our logo. It was used for placing a wide space in a text line. All we did was to remove the space from "em quad" and capitalize it to form EMQUAD.