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HTML How to Make a Website Customizing Colors and Fonts Pick Fonts and Set Relative Units

Pranav Mathur
Pranav Mathur
3,419 Points
Posted by Pranav Mathur
Pranav Mathur
3,419 Points

Why is 1.75em smaller than default, even though it should theoretically be 75% larger?

My heading became smaller when I applied the "font-size = 1.75em" rule. Why is that?

2 Answers

Thomas Fildes
Thomas Fildes
22,687 Points
Thomas Fildes
Thomas Fildes
22,687 Points

Hi Pranav,

It depends on what size the user has the font size as default. Most people do not change the default so commonly 1em equals 16px.

The default size of the <h1> element on my browser (Firefox) is 2em (32px) but it may differ for you because there is no uniform size and it is defined independently by each browser. So when I use 1.75em for the <h1> I have decreased the default size as it will now be 28px not 32px.

Hope this helps! Happy Coding!!!

web pad
web pad
4,483 Points

Thank you for this info. Where should we able to know the default browser font size settings for our browser? I have google chrome. It will really be helpful to know our browsers default settings.

gianni de luca
gianni de luca
16,891 Points
gianni de luca
gianni de luca
16,891 Points

Ok I got it. I had the same problem. I'm using google chrome and the default font-size is 16px. 1 em is = to the default size(16px). Try font-size = 16px and then try 1em... is the same. Then if you try 1.75 em the font-size is bigger because is .75 bigger than 1 em. Is confusing because the h1 tag gives the text a bigger size. But 1 em = 16px (chrome browser)