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Asked: 2026-05-16T07:25:21+00:00

I am still not clear what does size in em mean? I have worked

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I am still not clear what does size in em mean?
I have worked px, pt in CSS.
What would 0.8, 1.0 and 1.2 em mean?
I have seen height’s in CSS like:
height: 0.8em; or height: 1.2em;
How is it calculated?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The meaning of “em” has changed over the years. Not all fonts have the letter “M” in them (for example, Chinese), but all fonts have a height. The term has therefore come to mean the height of the font – not the width of the letter “M.”

    Let’s look at a simple example where we use the em unit to set font sizes:

    <html>
  <style>
    h1 { font-size: 2em }
  </style>
  <body>
    <h1>Movies</h1>
  </body>
</html>

    When used to specify font sizes, the
    em unit refers to the font size of the
    parent element. So, in the previous
    example, the font size of the h1
    element is set to be twice the font
    size of the body element. To find what
    the font size of the h1 element will
    be, we need to know the font size of
    body. Because this isn’t specified in
    the style sheet, the browser must find
    it from somewhere else – a good place
    to look is in the user’s preferences.
    So, if the user sets the normal font
    size to 10 points, the size of the h1
    element is 20 points. This makes
    document headlines stand out relative
    to the surrounding text. Therefore:
    Always use ems to set font sizes!

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