How to change font size latex

Font sizes, families, and styles

Contents

Introduction

LaTeX normally chooses the appropriate font and font size based on the logical structure of the document (e.g. sections). In some cases, you may want to set fonts and sizes by hand.

The following example shows how to use the smallest available font size in LaTeX ( \tiny ) and the small caps ( \textsc <. >) font style:

The following image shows the output produced by the example above:

Font sizes

Font sizes are identified by special names, the actual size is not absolute but relative to the font size declared in the \documentclass statement (see Creating a document in LaTeX).

In the following example, <\huge huge font size>declares that the text inside the braces must be formatted in a huge font size. For a complete list of available font sizes see the reference guide.

The following image shows the output produced by the example above:

Font families

By default, in standard LaTeX classes the default style for text is usually a Roman (upright) serif font. To use other styles (families) such as sans serif, typewriter (monospace) etc. you need to use some specific LaTeX commands, as shown in the example below:

The following image shows the output produced by the example above:

You can set up the use of sans font as a default in a LaTeX document by using the command:

Similarly, for using roman font as a default:

Font styles

The most common font styles in LaTeX are bold, italics and underlined, but there are a few more.

In the following example the \textsl command sets the text in a slanted style which makes the text look a bit like italics, but not quite. See the reference guide for a complete list of font styles.

The following image shows the output produced by the example above:

If you want to go back to «normal» font style (default for the LaTeX class you are using), this can be done by using the \textnormal <. >command or the \normalfont switch command.

Putting it all together

The following example combines together the various LaTeX code fragments used in this article.

Changing the font size in LaTeX

Changing the font size in LaTeX can be done on two levels, either affecting the whole document or parts/elements of it. Using a different font size on a global level will affect all normal-sized text as well as the size of headings, footnotes, etc. By changing the font size locally, however, a single word, a few lines of text, a large table or a heading throughout the document may be modified.

Changing the font size on a document-wide level

The standard classes, article, report and book support 3 different font sizes, 10pt, 11pt, 12pt (by default 10pt ). The font size is set through the optional argument, e.g.:

In most cases, the available font sizes for the standard classes are sufficient.

Other font sizes

The documentclass names are slightly different from the standard classes:

The KOMA-script and memoir class

The KOMA-script and memoir classes are more flexible when it comes to font sizes. Please see the documentation for more details.

Changing the font size locally

LaTeX knows several font size modifier-commands (from biggest to smallest):

A table of the exact font sizes in points can be found on wikibooks.

A good rule of thumb is don’t use too many different sizes and don’t make things too small/big.

There are two possible ways to use these font size modifier commands, inline or as environment:

A few more options

Note: The figure is scaled and therefore does not show the actual font size. It illustrates the difference between the font sizes.

Still not enough?

Here is alternative, more flexible approach. The anyfontsize package scales the next bigger/smaller font size available to whatever size you like.

The two arguments to \fontsize are the actual font size and the size of the baseline-skip. The baseline-skip should be set to roughly 1.2x the font size.

That’s more like it! Again, this only works with a non-standard font type. And again, it does not show the actual font size. Try it with LaTeX!

LaTeX font size

LaTeX font size

Note: Other documentclasses have other default font sizes!

For example documentclass memoir has 12 font sizes:
9pt, 10pt, 11pt, 12pt, 14pt, 17pt, 20pt, 25pt, 30pt, 36pt, 48pt and 60pt

Or the beamer class for presentation has 8 font sizes:
8pt, 9pt, 10pt, 11pt, 12pt, 14pt, 17pt and 20pt.

1.1 change font size

The font size of single words, paragraphs or the whole text can be changed. By the following ten commands:

How to change the size of a word:

How to change the size of an area: example
output:
This part should be smaller then the rest of the document.

the commands could be used as a switcher:

example

output: text before after

The effect of these commands is as long as is until the next command or the document is finished. For example, to switch back to the normal font size, then you have to add a \normalsize.

The following table shows the changes in font size depending on the selected standard font size (article, report, book und letter):

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The documentclass memoir has two additional size commands:\miniscule which is smaller then \tiny and \HUGE which is bigger then \Huge.

The documentclass beamer class

1.2 other font size

By using the default classes and sizes, one can use 12 different font sizes: 5pt, 6pt, 7pt, 8pt, 9pt, 10pt, 11pt, 12pt, 14pt, 17pt, 20pt and 25pt.
To use more, one need first To use more font sizes, you first need a font in which has the desired size, i.e. not all fonts allow all sizes. If you use a size which is not provided by the font, you get an error message like this:

This means that the desired size is not available and the closest matching size is 4.17pt (points) away from the desired one.

1.2.1 command to change font size

First, use a font like lmodern and then you can set the font size:
<\fontsize\selectfont>

How do I change the default font size?

How can I change the default font size throughout the LaTeX document? Is this even possible?

3 Answers 3

at least some document classes provide an optional argument to do this. for example,

will provide a changed set of font sizes ( \footnotesize will be smaller, for example) in a coherent style.

If your using KOMA-Script use the option fontsize= to set a size that may differ from the above three.

To change the size of the main font only try \fontsize< >< >\selectfont but this is not a real user command so one should know what he does when using it 😉

You can change the main font size and the other font sizing commands (as long as the font is scalable) through the fontsize package.

The fontsize package option

The most basic way is to use the fontsize option which automatically sets the line spacing:

The \changefontsize command

If you need precise line spacing you can use the \changefontsize command:

Here is a minimal working example. The normal size and the normal line spacing are set to 11pt and 12.75pt respectively:

Printing samples

The values ​​of the font sizing commands can be obtained with the \printsamples command:

prints the values of the font size and line spacing for all the sizes defined by the package.

prints the values of the font size and line spacing for all the sizes declared in the optional argument.

Here is a minimal working example with the Cochineal font:

LaTeX/Fonts

Help and Recommendations

Contents

Font families [ edit | edit source ]

By default, LaTeX uses Computer Modern, a family of typefaces designed by Donald Knuth for use with TeX. It contains serif, sans serif, and monospaced fonts, each available in several weights and optical sizes.

The bodies of LaTeX documents are set in Roman (serif) type by default, but this can be changed by setting the family default:

where is any of the following:

Emphasizing text [ edit | edit source ]

In order to add some emphasis to a word or a phrase, use the \emph < text >command, which usually italicizes the text. Italics may be specified explicitly with \textit < text >.

I want to emphasize a word.

Note that the \emph command is dynamic: if you emphasize a word which is already in an emphasized sentence, it will be reverted to the upright font.

In this emphasized sentence, there is an emphasized word which looks upright.

Text may be emphasized more heavily through the use of boldface, particularly for keywords the reader may be trying to find when reading the text. As bold text is generally read before any other text in a paragraph or even on a page, it should be used sparingly. It may also be used in place of italics when using sans-serif typefaces to provide a greater contrast with unemphasized text. Bold text can be generated with the \textbf < text >command.

Bold text may be used to heavily emphasize very important words or phrases.