Centimeters to Points (cm to pt)

1 centimeter equals 28.34645669 points (rounded).

1 centimeter = 28.34645669 points

How to convert centimeters to points

To convert centimeters to points, multiply the number of centimeters by 28.34645669. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply points by 0.03527777778 (rounded).

points = centimeters × 28.34645669

Example: 10 centimeters = 283.4645669 points.

About these units

Centimeter (cm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One hundredth of a meter. Used for body measurements, clothing and everyday objects.

Scientists, rather than shopkeepers, gave the centimeter its place. In 1832 Carl Friedrich Gauss proposed a system of absolute units built on length, mass and time, choosing the millimeter, milligram and second. In 1873 a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, whose members included James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), recommended the centimeter, gram and second instead. That CGS system dominated physics for decades, until the metre-kilogram-second system replaced it in the mid-twentieth century and led to SI.

CGS units proved awkward for rooms and buildings, which run to hundreds of centimeters, but the centimeter itself never went away. It is still the everyday unit for height, clothing and small objects, and it appears in map scales and rainfall reports. An adult fingernail is roughly one centimeter wide, and a milliliter is defined as exactly one cubic centimeter. An inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters. The CGS system itself survives mainly in theoretical physics and astrophysics, where Gaussian units are still common.

1 centimeter = 0.01 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Centimetre-gram-second system of units; Wikipedia: Centimetre; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Point (pt)

Typography & screenCurrent unit

1/72 of an inch (0.3528 mm). The desktop-publishing point used by PostScript and CSS.

Printers have used a point since at least 1517, when Francesco Torniello da Novara in Milan set it at one ninth of a letter's height. Later systems differed: Fournier in 1737 used about 0.345 mm, Didot in 1783 about 0.376 mm, and the American point approved by type founders in 1886 about 0.3515 mm. TeX uses 1/72.27 inch, or 0.35146 mm, and a metric point of 0.250 mm was set by standards bodies in 1999.

The figure used here is the desktop publishing point of exactly 1/72 inch, 0.3528 mm. Xerox Interpress used it, and Adobe PostScript carried it on. W3C adopted it in 1996 for CSS, where 12 pt equals 16 px because a pixel is assumed to be 1/96 inch. NIST lists the computer point as an exact conversion. This point is about 0.4 percent longer than the TeX point. Font sizes refer to the em square rather than the printed letters.

1 point = 0.0003527777778 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Point (typography); NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8

Related conversions

See all length units.