How to specify font size less than 10pt (or more than 12pt)?

Question

I'm trying to make a document that has a very small font throughout, I tried this:

\documentclass[0.5mm, a4paper]{article}
\documentclass[7pt, a4paper]{article}

But it doesn't seem that they allow me to go anything below 10pt.

This hack make it work, but not for the section headers:

\fontsize{4mm}{5mm}\selectfont

Does anyone know any better ways to do this?

Answer 1

• extsizes classes offer a base font size between 8 and 20 pt, you may choose the extarticle class

• KOMA-Script classes support freely customizable base font sizes and you may specify them by any TeX length unit like pt, bp or mm, so you might use scrartcl.

I recommend to use a KOMA-Script class.

Answer 2

Instead of switching to a KOMA-Script class, you may also use the scrextend package (part of KOMA-Script) and its \changefontsizes macro. It features an optional argument to change \baselineskip (the default is 1.2 * fontsize). For details see section 3.5 of the KOMA-Script manual (the relevant content also applies to scrextend, as mentioned in section 9.5 of the manual). EDIT: Make sure to use a scalable font (e.g. Latin Modern instead of Computer Modern).

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{lmodern}

\usepackage{scrextend}
\changefontsizes[20pt]{16pt}

\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}

\lipsum[1]

\end{document}

Answer 3

It is a semantically better practice to define a new font size which is a size less than tiny, rather than use \fontsize, by using:

\makeatletter
  \newcommand\tinyv{\@setfontsize\tinyv{4pt}{6}}
\makeatother

I called, it tinyv (v being the size in roman numerals), but you can call it anything you wish.

You can also change any of the others this way, by using renewcommand. You can do this in the class file you are using, in which case you do not need the apocryphal \makeatletter and makeatother.

\renewcommand\scriptsize{@setfontsize\scriptsize{5}{7}} 

Answer 4

Another option is to use the extsizes package. Although it doesn't provide a 16 point font, 14 and 17 point options are available:

\documentclass[17pt]{extreport}

I would also like to cite the extsizes documentation:

Don't use extsizes just because you think it's cool, or because you think the font looks too small on the screen. You should have a clear reason why 10, 11 or 12 pt text is not suitable for you.

Answer 5

Use a class which supports more fontsizes. E.g. one of the KOMA-classes:

\documentclass[fontsize=16pt]{scrreprt}

Answer 6

Similar to what the KOMA-script classes provide, the memoir document class also offers 14pt and 17pt (but not 16pt) options for the basic font size of a document. The memoir class-related files should be installed automatically by most modern TeX distributions. If not, use your package manager -- tlmgr or MikTeX's own update program -- to install them.

You'd select these fontsize options with the commands

\documentclass[14pt]{memoir}

and

\documentclass[17pt,extrafontsizes]{memoir}

respectively. I suggest you include the option extrafontsizes when using the 17pt size option. Doing so will ensure that commands that change relative font sizes -- such as \Large, \huge, and \Huge -- will produce reasonable-looking results. Specifically, the Latin Modern fonts in T1 encoding will be loaded instead of the default Computer Modern fonts in OT1 encoding.