Friday 9 November 2012

Font Size Units

I've always used points (pt values) for sizing fonts on web pages, e.g.:

body {
    font-size: 12pt;
}

Those of you who know me know that I'm a developer, not a designer (in the web designer sense; I design systems, but that's different). I couldn't visual-design my way out of a paper bag. (Okay, maybe that's a bit harsh.) I don't think I'm a one-trick pony, but I'm definitely much more left- than right-brained. The engineer in me says, I'm setting a font size, right? And fonts are measured in points, so I use points. Or at least, I used to.

Chris Coyier, on the other hand, is a designer. And he gives some good reasons even an engineer can understand why using pt values only makes sense for print stylesheets, not screen stylesheets. And apparently he's just recently been converting himself to using ems rather than pixels. Both articles are interesting reads.

2 comments:

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

In relation to this, I remember reading an article regarding the root-em in regards to responsive design here:

Resizing Responsive Designs with CSS REMs

Instead of being relative to the parent element like Ems, REMs are relative to the document root’s font size. They also allow for scaling of specific page elements while leaving others unaffected.