Text Size

CSS gives you full control over the size of your text. Using CSS, you can set your text in any point size, the same way that all other print and graphic designers can already. This is immediately great for creating text bigger than what was originally possible (going up to size 7 with <font size> — the equivalent of only 36pt text). Now you can get infinitely big text.

It also means you can be far more precise with your font sizes — never before have you been able to get 11pt text, which lay between sizes 2 and 3.

To size your text you use the font-size property, and have a number of different units and methods with which to set the exact size. They are:

• units: ems, points and pixels


• pre-defined keywords


• percentages

As we will see, some of these units are better than others for certain purposes.