As someone who is interested in readability on the web, I thought I’d try an experiment. I always set my site base font size to 100% (which virtually always means body copy will be sized at 16 pixels – picture 12 point Arial or Times on a word-processor to get an idea of the size). The reason is simple: big text is easier to read than small text. Squinting isn’t fun.
Caslon
It’s generally agreed that 16 pixel text is good to read. But I’ve not seen any sites extend this logic to its obvious conclusion: why stop at 16 pixels?
Perhaps convention has dictated that body copy shouldn’t be any bigger than 16 pixels? Perhaps there’s an atavistic belief in the sleekness of small copy? Perhaps designers feel copy that’s too big won’t allow space for any other elements on the page? Perhaps I’m just getting old and my sight is failing? Whatever the reason, I’ve not seen any sites try larger text.
And yet common sense surely dictates that the larger text is, the easier it is to read. So I’ve set the base font size on this site to 125%, i.e. 20 pixels 99% of the time.
So I’d love to know what you think. Is the body copy more readable? Is it somehow ugly? Leave your comment here!
Update: obviously I dropped the daliance with 20 pixel body copy. The site now uses 16 pixel Georgia.