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Corbin Balzan
11,751 Points1em does not equal 100%?
I am trying to use an adjustable unit for the padding of list items. I used percentage and em interchangeably (setting max-width of the body to 90%) but when I went to change them 1em did not equal 100% and vice versa. Why would this be happening?
2 Answers

rydavim
18,811 PointsWithout seeing your code, it's difficult to say for sure. You definitely don't want to use em and percentages interchangeably.
One em is equal to the currently specified point size. So by default, 1em is equal to 16px. It doesn't translate well to a percentage.
When defining a percentage width, you are comparing it to the width of the parent element. So if you say the max width of the body is 90% that will be 90% of the window (usually).

mtch
8,521 Points1 em is equal to your currently chosen font size - mostly it is 16px.