HTML Font Size – How to Change Text Size with an HTML Tag
Joel Olawanle
When you add text to your HTML file with an HTML tag, you won’t always want the text to remain the default size. You’ll want to be able to adjust how the text displays in the browser.
In this article, you will learn how to change the text size with an HTML tag.
Before you proceed, it is essential to know that there is only one way we can do this: through CSS’s font-size property. We can use the font-size property through inline, internal, or external styling.
In the past, we could adjust text size within our HTML tag without using CSS. But that was before HTML5. Then we added text using the <font> tag, which can take in an attribute of size as seen below:
This size attribute can take in value from 1-7 in which the text size increases from 1 to 7. But like I said, this has long been depreciated, and most people don’t even know it existed.
In case you are in a rush to see how you can change the size of your text, then here it is:
Suppose you are not in a rush. Let’s briefly dive right in.
How to Change Text Size With Inline CSS
Inline CSS allows you to apply styles to specific HTML elements. This means we are putting CSS into an HTML tag directly. We use the style attribute, which now holds all our styling.
We use the font-size property alongside our value to change the text size using inline CSS. This value can use any of your preferred CSS units such as em, px, rem, and so on.
A perfect syntax would be:
How to Change Text Size With Internal or External CSS
The approach you use to change text size in internal and external CSS styling is similar, since you use a selector. The general syntax for this is:
The selector can either be our HTML tag or maybe a class or an ID. For example:
Or we could use a class:
Wrapping Up
In this article, you learned how to change the font/text size of an HTML element using CSS. You also saw how developers did it before the introduction of HTML5.
Also, keep in mind that it’s always better to style your HTML elements using internal or external styling, as it offers a lot of flexibility compared to inline styling.
For example, you can make use of one CSS class for all your p tags rather than having to add inline styles to all your p tag elements.
Using inline styles is not considered best practice because it results in a lot of repetition – you cannot reuse the styles elsewhere. To learn more, you can read my article on Inline Style in HTML.
I hope this tutorial gives you the knowledge to change the size of your HTML text so you can make it look better.
CSS Basics for Typography
In 2020 there are a lot of developers and designers who want to learn the basics of CSS. In this series of articles, I will teach you those main topics. In this specific article, I will review the essential CSS properties of typography while using many visual examples.
font-family
This font-family property is used to declare what font we want to use. It can receive an array of fonts. This can be useful to us for two reasons:
- If the first font isn’t working in a specific operating system, the browser will use the next font until something matches it.
- If the font has missed some of the characters, it will fill in the missing characters from the next font at the list.
font-weight
This property, like his name, is for declaring the font-weight of the text. The default value of this property is normal , and the second common value of it is bold .
In more advanced fonts there are more than two states. Instead of using names in the values, these fonts are using numeric values: 100 / 200 / 300 / 400 / 500 / 600 / 700 / 800 / 900 and 950 . Which are equal to the common mapping names (in design apps), see table:
The normal keyword is equal to 400 value, and the bold keyword is equal to 700 value. Examples:
font-size
This property, like his name, is for declaring the font-size of the text. Even today, the most common sizing unit is pixels. Example:
From my perspective, it is better to control the font-size with rem units. If you want to know more about how to work with rem units, you can read my article “Update your font-size to REM units”.
line-height
This property is telling the browser the height of the line in ratio to the text-size . This property can get fixed value like pixel, but the most common way is to give it a value of ratio without any unit.
The line-height property, is a type of inherited property, which usually means you declare it one time in the root element, and it will affect all the elements on our website. This way if we have different font-size in inner elements, the line-height will stay with the same ratio, and we won’t need to declare it multiple times. Example:
font-style
We use it to update the text font into an italic variant state.
Text color property
The color property is used to color the text. It can receive color keywords, for example, red , magenta . It can receive a HEX color code and color functions like RGB and HSL. If you want to know more about CSS colors, you can read my article “Why CSS HSL Colors are Better!”.
text-align
This property, like his name, is to control the alignment of text in its reading axis(inline-axis). Besides the possibilities to align left and right , we have the center value and the less known justify value, which aligns the text in both ways.
Besides, there is an extensive property, text-align-last , which allows you to differentiate the last line from all the other lines. For more info: text-align-last in MDN.
direction
The direction property sets the direction of text, table columns, flexbox, grids, and more. It has two values:
- ltr value — for Latin languages that are read from left to right.
- rtl value — for Semitic languages that are read from right to left.
When using the direction property the text-align property is being updated automatically as well in the same direction unless it is defined otherwise. Example:
vertical-align
This property is used mainly for vertical inline text content. The main common values are baseline (default value), text-top , and text-bottom which are relative to the line-height of the text in the container.
There are more values like top and bottom that can act differently only if the line-height of to row is different from the line-height of the inline elements.
This property can be used even unit values which are positioned according to the baseline value, which means 0px = baseline , with this, you can play with negative & positive values, for example -2px or 2px .
Note: this vertical alignment is good for text elements. For vertical alignment of boxes, it is better to use CSS flexbox.
text-decoration
This property’s most used case is for adding underline to links, and it could also be used for creating overline and line-through . Example:
But in the last years, this property has been given a lot of extensions, and now you can use all the values together, for example:
Another possibility we now have is to play with the style of the lines and with their color.
text-transform
The text-transform property specifies how to capitalize on texts. We use it to make text appear in all-uppercase or all-lowercase, or to make each word capitalized.
letter-spacing
The letter-spacing property, as his name is, decreases or increases the spacing between the letters of the words. When using this property with px units, you can use fragments of pixels for example 0.1px . To decrease the spacing, this property can get negative values as well, like -1.5px , for example.
word-spacing
The letter-spacing property, as his name, allows us to define the space between the words.
text-indent
The indent property is used to indent the first line in a paragraph. Inside with a positive value or outside with a negative value.
::first-letter
The ::first-letter pseudo-element selector allows us to style the first letter in different styles from the regular text in paragraphs, for example.
Besides the ::first-letter pseudo-element, there is the ::first-line pseudo-element, which allows you to style the first-line of a paragraph differently. Because I haven’t seen a common use for it, I have decided not to give it a big stage in my article, but just to notify you that it exists.
text-shadow
The text-shadow property allows us to add shadow to text. For it to work, we need to provide it with at least the offset-x and the offset-y of the shadow. If we provide only these two values, the shadow will be left without a spread and with the same color of the text.
The third numeric value will be the spread of the shadow. We can also give it a different color value, in the beginning, or the end of the value.
Besides, we can add multiple text-shadows, using a comma in the value.
text-stroke
The text-stroke property is a non-standard property that works in all main browsers. It works with the -webkit prefix, even on Firefox & old Edge. The property receives two values, stroke-width and stroke-color.
More and More and More!
There are more properties of CSS for typography and big new topics like Variable Fonts, which are dynamic. But in this article, I have tried to show the main basic elements to control typography with CSS.
If this topic interests you, you can continue and explore this vast topic in CSS. Here some more properties and topics we haven’t talked about: Variable Fonts, font-variant , text-justify , unicode-bidi , all the ways of breaking words in CSS, and I may have missed several more��.
To Summarize
In this article, my primary purpose was to show the most useful properties for CSS typography and to provide you with this knowledge.
Final Words
I hope I inspired you and showed you some new possibilities.
If you like this post, I would appreciate applause and sharing ��.
I create lots of content on CSS. Be sure to follow me via Twitter, Linkedin, and Medium.
Also, you can see all of my content on my website: eladsc.dev.
Who Am I?
I am Elad Shechter, a Web Developer specializing in CSS & HTML design and architecture.
font-size
The font-size CSS property sets the size of the font. Changing the font size also updates the sizes of the font size-relative <length> units, such as em , ex , and so forth.
Try it
Syntax
The font-size property is specified in one of the following ways:
- As one of the absolute-size, relative-size or math keywords
- As a <length> or a <percentage> , relative to the element’s font size.
Values
Absolute-size keywords, based on the user’s default font size (which is medium ).
Relative-size keywords. The font will be larger or smaller relative to the parent element’s font size, roughly by the ratio used to separate the absolute-size keywords above.
A positive <length> value. For most font-relative units (such as em and ex ), the font size is relative to the parent element’s font size.
For font-relative units that are root-based (such as rem ), the font size is relative to the size of the font used by the <html> (root) element.
A positive <percentage> value, relative to the parent element’s font size.
Note: To maximize accessibility, it is generally best to use values that are relative to the user’s default font size.
- math Experimental Special mathematical scaling rules must be applied when determining the computed value of the font-size property.
Description
There are several ways to specify the font size, including keywords or numerical values for pixels or ems. Choose the appropriate method based on the needs of the particular web page.
Keywords
Keywords are a good way to set the size of fonts on the web. By setting a keyword font size on the <body> element, you can set relative font-sizing everywhere else on the page, giving you the ability to easily scale the font up or down on the entire page accordingly.
Pixels
Setting the font size in pixel values ( px ) is a good choice when you need pixel accuracy. A px value is static. This is an OS-independent and cross-browser way of literally telling the browsers to render the letters at exactly the number of pixels in height that you specified. The results may vary slightly across browsers, as they may use different algorithms to achieve a similar effect.
Font sizing settings can also be used in combination. For example, if a parent element is set to 16px and its child element is set to larger , the child element displays larger than the parent element on the page.
Note: Defining font sizes in px is not accessible, because the user cannot change the font size in some browsers. For example, users with limited vision may wish to set the font size much larger than the size chosen by a web designer. Avoid using them for font sizes if you wish to create an inclusive design.
Using an em value creates a dynamic or computed font size (historically the em unit was derived from the width of a capital «M» in a given typeface.). The numeric value acts as a multiplier of the font-size property of the element on which it is used. Consider this example:
In this case, the font size of <p> elements will be double the computed font-size inherited by <p> elements. By extension, a font-size of 1em equals the computed font-size of the element on which it is used.
If a font-size has not been set on any of the <p> ‘s ancestors, then 1em will equal the default browser font-size , which is usually 16px . So, by default 1em is equivalent to 16px , and 2em is equivalent to 32px . If you were to set a font-size of 20px on the <body> element say, then 1em on the <p> elements would instead be equivalent to 20px , and 2em would be equivalent to 40px .
In order to calculate the em equivalent for any pixel value required, you can use this formula:
For example, suppose the font-size of the <body> of the page is set to 16px . If the font-size you want is 12px , then you should specify 0.75em (because 12/16 = 0.75). Similarly, if you want a font size of 10px , then specify 0.625em (10/16 = 0.625); for 22px , specify 1.375em (22/16).
The em is a very useful unit in CSS since it automatically adapts its length relative to the font that the reader chooses to use.
One important fact to keep in mind: em values compound. Take the following HTML and CSS:
Assuming that the browser’s default font-size is 16px, the words «outer» would be rendered at 25.6px, but the word «inner» would be rendered at 40.96px. This is because the inner <span> ‘s font-size is 1.6em which is relative to its parent’s font-size , which is in turn relative to its parent’s font-size . This is often called compounding.
rem values were invented in order to sidestep the compounding problem. rem values are relative to the root html element, not the parent element. In other words, it lets you specify a font size in a relative fashion without being affected by the size of the parent, thereby eliminating compounding.
The CSS below is nearly identical to the previous example. The only exception is that the unit has been changed to rem .
Then we apply this CSS to the same HTML, which looks like this:
In this example, the words «outer inner outer» are all displayed at 25.6px (assuming that the browser’s font-size has been left at the default value of 16px).
Like the em unit, an element’s font-size set using the ex unit is computed or dynamic. It behaves in exactly the same way, except that when setting the font-size property using ex units, the font-size equals the x-height of the first available font used on the page. The number value multiplies the element’s inherited font-size and the font-size compounds relatively.
See the W3C Editor’s Draft for a more detailed description of font-relative length units such as ex .
font-size
font-size sets the font size of the text inside the element to which it is applied, and that of its descendants. You can size text using absolute measurements, or measurements relative to the affected element’s parent or root elements. CSS Text Styling Fundamentals provides an overview.
Overview table
Syntax
- font-size: absolute keywords
- font-size: inherit
- font-size: length
- font-size: percentage
- font-size: relative keywords
Values
Examples
A selection of examples showing some typical uses of the font-size property.
A redefinition of the typical 16px browser default font size medium value as 10px, followed by a resizing of the text that follows proportionate to that.
Usage
Otherwise, pixels offer the safest way to specify measurements, since CSS pixels are adjusted for variations in display pixel density.
While the initial medium size applies widely, browsers apply a default style sheet that modifies it for various semantic elements, boosting the size of headings, for example. Browsers also automatically resize fonts when zooming the page, stepping by values that may not correspond exactly to the zoom factor. Unless disabled using text-size-adjust, fonts also resize when tipping between portrait and landscape orientations on mobile browsers. For an overview of the issue, see The Mobile Viewport and Orientation.
The value of font-size also affects the value of line-height when using its default or relative measurements.
Along with many other CSS properties, font-size can also be applied directly as an SVG attribute: