- From: David Perrell <davidp@earthlink.net>
- Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 11:27:06 -0700
- To: "Thomas Reardon" <thomasre@MICROSOFT.com>, "'www-style@w3.org'" <www-style@w3.org>
I wrote:
> ... The font-relative Em and En are
and neglectected to strike "font-relative" before sending the
message. However,
> horizontal measurements, not vertical.
is correct. In practice, em and en are used to specify horizontal
dimensions, such as paragraph indents.
In current usage, the em is a square of the type size. An em for a
12pt font is 12 points square. Consequently, a line-height of 100%
for a 12pt font will be 12 points from baseline to baseline.
The CSS spec confirms this in section 5.2.6:
------------------------------------------
The three rules in the example below have the same resultant line
height:
DIV { line-height: 1.2; font-size: 10pt } /* number */
DIV { line-height: 1.2em; font-size: 10pt } /* length */
DIV { line-height: 120%; font-size: 10pt } /* percentage */
------------------------------------------
In other words:
1.2 * 10pt = 12pt
1.2em for a 10pt font = 12pt
120% of 10pt = 12pt
David Perrell
Received on Friday, 2 August 1996 14:30:35 UTC