How to make font smaller than 4pt?

Question

I am writing a cheat sheet, but I want to make the 4pt smaller this is my set up. I tried a lot but nothing really helped. This is my setup:

\documentclass[a4paper,landscape,parskip=full]{article}
\usepackage[fontsize=4pt]{scrextend}
\begin{document}
    Test
\end{document}

If I change the 4pt to 3pt then it gets bigger.

4pt is already below what most people consider readable … Also not a minimal example by any means, nor a working one. — Ingmar, May 30 '22 at 10:15
Amazingly, this works: \documentclass[3pt]{scrartcl} \usepackage{blindtext} \begin{document} \blindtext \end{document} — Ingmar, May 30 '22 at 10:21
@Ingmar you changed the document class and probably this loads another font, see my answer for an explanation. — TobiBS, May 30 '22 at 10:22
True, I used the scrartcl class instead of \usepackage{scrextend}. — Ingmar, May 30 '22 at 10:25
Related question: fontsize - Why do Latex classes often have font size limitations? - TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange — user202729, Jun 04 '22 at 06:02

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered May 30 '22 at 10:21

First of all, what you are showing is not considered an MWE. Reduced to the minimum, there are only two warning remaining in the log that tell you what is going on here:

Font shape `OT1/cmr/m/n' in size <3> not available(Font) size <5> substituted
Size substitutions with differences(Font) up to 2.0pt have occurred.

This is because the standard CM font is only available in certain sizes, 5 being the minimum.

If you load one of the packages that contain a scalable CM font, this issue can be overcome, so you can try type1cm for example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{type1cm}
\usepackage[fontsize=3pt]{scrextend}
\begin{document}
    Test
\end{document}

However 3pt is really small as others have pointed out.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 03 '22 at 15:09

0

With ttf/otf fonts, you can use fontspec Scale= option.

MWE

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{CMU Serif}[Scale=0.3]
\begin{document}
    Test
\end{document}

answered Jun 03 '22 at 15:09

Cicada

10,129

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 03 '22 at 16:35

Use fontsize and a freely scalable font, for instance Times that's rather narrow (narrower than Computer Modern, especially at small sizes).

\RequirePackage{fix-cm}% to avoid a spurious warning
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[a4paper,landscape,margin=0.5cm,heightrounded]{geometry}
\usepackage[fontsize=3pt]{fontsize}
\usepackage{newtx}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\begin{multicols}{4}
\lipsum[1-149]
\end{multicols}
\end{document}

This will fill a single page. If I use fontsize=4pt there will be more than one page and a half.

How to make font smaller than 4pt?

3 Answers3

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