How big is a 72 size font?

Answer 1

The answer is: it depends.

It depends on the specific units used. In most Word Processing fonts are measured in units called "points." A point is a very old measurement that involves a very old typsetting tool. It has varied over time. But in the 1990s, a technology called PostScript set the new standard: there are 72 points in an inch. That means that a single point is 1/72nd of an inch, or ~0.353 millimeters.

In the world of computing, this still varies some, as inches in print don't really translate well onto screen real estate.

To set a font to 72 points using CSS you use the following rule

.selector { font-size:72pt;}

The other very common unit is pixels. A pixel is a tiny square that lights up on your computer screen. When you put these tiny dots together, they form a picture (your eye does the blending.) 72 pixels is about 4 times the size of the font your question is in at the top of the page. (That's 20px.) The symbol for pixels is px, so the above rule would be

.selector {font-size:72px;}

Pixels are a digital measurement. Points are a print measurement. There's very little continuity between the two.

Other measurements are relative. For instance "em" is the size of one "m" (horizontally) in the font you're currently using. If you're using a bigger font, then 1em is bigger. "ex" is the size of one "x." You can also use percentages "%" 50% is half the size of the current size. 150% is one and a half times the size.

The other one is the pica, which is a print unit, that is 12 points.

So, like I said at the beginning: it depends. :)

Answer 2

It is about 2 cm high