Do you want to change the font size in WordPress posts and pages? There are a few ways to increase or decrease font size and text formatting in WordPress. In this article, we will show you how to easily change the font size in WordPress.
Video Version
If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.
Method 1: Using the Paragraph Headings
Most of the time people want a bigger font size to grab attention of their readers specially for the heading elements. When writing the post content, you can use different heading sizes. In the visual editor mode, you can see all the available items under the tab called “Paragraph” as shown in the screenshot below:
These sizes are controlled by your theme’s stylesheet file (style.css) to make sure that the font size is coherent with everything. In most cases, one of the heading sizes should get the job done.
Using headings in your articles is good for user experience at the same time it also makes your WordPress posts SEO friendly.
Method 2: TinyMCE Advanced Plugin
For this method, we will use a WordPress plugin to get a better control on overall font-sizes and text formatting when writing content.
First thing you need to do is install and activate the TinyMCE advanced plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, simply go to Settings » TinyMCE Advanced to configure the editor settings. On this page you will see the TinyMCE Editor tool bar with buttons. You will also see unused buttons below.
Now all you need to do is drag and drop the font size button from the unused buttons to any row in the toolbar. After that click on Save Changes button.
To see the button in action, create a new post or edit an existing one and you will see the default WordPress visual editor is replaced by the TinyMCE Advanced editor with font-size button.
As you can see in the screenshot above, that you can select any font size you like from the drop down. This gives you more freedom over things because now you can actually have font-size even smaller than the normal body font i.e 8pt or 10pt.
The biggest downside of this method is if you ever change themes, you have to account for all the font size changes you made in individual posts.
Method 3: Change Overall Font Size of Paragraphs Using CSS
If you are unhappy with the font size your theme uses for paragraphs and want to change it, then the best way to do this by using CSS.
You will need to add the following custom CSS to your WordPress theme.
p {
font-size:16px;
}
Note: This change will affect all paragraphs in your WordPress theme and you will loose your changes when switching themes.
We hope this article helped you learn how to easily change font size in WordPress. You may also want to see our list of the best typography plugins for WordPress to improve your site’s design and readability.
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What if you want to make the title smaller but the tagline bigger? Being able to dictate fonts and sizes of text in posts is great, but how about the title and tagline?
Love these tutorials. This tutorial helped my font look uniform on my website. Thanks again!
I installed this and it doesn’t show in the editor? What am I missing? Thanks.
My old WP theme appears to have coded Heading 1 in 12 pt font like normal text. I manually change each heading to 14 pt. But then the coding doesn’t say “h1” which Google robots look for. If I use your plugin(which is cool) and change heading font sizes, will they still be labeled h1, h2, h3? Also, I don’t want to change fonts on pages already customized. Can I apply the plugin to blog posts only? Thanks.
Hi Darlene,
You can give plugin a try. However, if your headings are hard coded in the theme then this may not help you change those headings.
The use of px (or pt) in this Guide is not recommendable, because on small Screens like on Smartphones the font size is very small. Its better to use em.
How do I change the font size of menu items?
hi, my fontsize is % not pt, how can i change it back to pt?
fantastic… i just did it… thank a lot
I want to enlarge Excel spreadsheets in my posts. I snip them and upload them via Add Media. But I don’t see a way to increase the font size of these uploads.
So…. I increased the font size in my spreadsheet and then snipped and uploaded the spreadsheet with the larger font – but it still appears as the original size.
Is there any way to increase the font size in the post as it currently is too small to be easily read (there are several columns in my spreadsheet)?
Hi Andrew,
We are not sure we fully understand your question. If you are uploading your spreadsheet as an image file, then its dimensions will depend on your post container. Let’s suppose your post container or content area is 600px wide, then your theme will automatically shrink the image to fit in the container. You can also try selecting full size image before inserting it into your post.
Hi, thanks for sharing, very useful indeed. Is there a way to also adjust the font size of the title, or maybe better done in CSS (and if so, how)? thanks again!
I use tinymcv plugin to change the font size. but when i press enter and go to the next line the font size will be default value which is 9pt. How can I change the default value to 12pt.
Thanks for the post. But I want to know more… I want to make the bigger size of some special word in a sentence without any plugin. Special words in a sentence. e.g. we are doing in MS word. Can it possible? Hope your answer.
Hi jitendra to do that open your text editor.
and type “font-size: 120%;”
For example:
Your text
You can change the font % by any value. I hope it will help you.
Thanks for the video and info, but I can’t change single lines of font sizes when writing a blog post.
In Visual Editor when I select “Heading 1” or “Heading 2” it changes the entire entry, but I only need to change that one line. I have to double space to make that happen without changing everything else. But then the spacing is wrong because it doesn’t need to be double spaced. Please help. And is there any other way to change font by font size (11, 12, 14, etc) instead of the preselected “Heading 1” “Heading 2”, etc.? Because TinyMCE didn’t work for me. Thanks!
What are you talking about, WordPress? Just make a simple option to increase the font size! Not widgets that don’t work with some themes or they work for one paragraph etc. Because the Paragraph tab give either too small a font, or weirdly formatted, hard to read. Why is it so hard to just add an option to increase the size wit a button?…
Not kidding. This should not be this difficult. Every time I hit return it reverts back to the original size. Do I really have to select the font size for every single paragraph?
TinyMce advance has conflict with visual composer,
Hi. Thank you. I am learning how to edit font size, font type and spacing. This is a big help.
Hi, first of all thank you for all the knowlege available on this site. It’s great !
I followed instructions from this article, but I still can’t change to font size in headers. I installed both TinyMCE and Google fonts. I am able to change font styles but not the size.
Thank you,
Anna
Thanks for this great post. It worked for me. I can now edit font family, change font size, underline text, highlight text and even insert table. Thanks.
I just updated my site and theme. I am having a weird issue of my woocommerce product titles having bigger fonts than they were before updates. i have tried custom css from other forums and wondering if maybe I can get an option here.. Kindly advise.
Hey Philip,
Have you tested your website with different browsers and devices to make sure that it is not an issue with your browser settings. After that try reaching out to your theme developer, they will be able to tell you whats changed in the new version or if there is a better way to solve this issue.
Is there a simple way to set a new default font size in WP?
I have been manually setting to a larger font to improve readability but the theme doesn’t like it and tends to revert back to default whenever I press ENTER and also the paragraph headings don’t work when I’m inside text with the new size.
I’d have thought this would have been one of the first features to include in WP themes. The current default font is very small and I find it hard to read.
Thanks, Thomas.
Hi Thomas,
You can go to Appearance » Customize and click on the Additional CSS tab.
Then in the CSS box on the left panel, add this CSS at the end of whatever text/code you see there.
body { font-size:16px; }You will see font size change in the live preview. Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save & Publish’ button on top.
This is so ridiculous and why I’m having a hard time with WP. It should be just as Word. You highlight the text and select from 100’s of fonts. Why does WP make this so difficult for the lay person? Can this not be changed?
Perfect! Thank you.
How do you change the font size of the title….I am not talking about content I mean the page title located at the very top of a page..
My website I am unable to write post using advance tinymce. I have already installed the advance tinymce plug in , but it works for adding job only. It doesn’t work for post writing. I have tried a lot to change the same. but it does not work,, How to change font now
Awesome information nice post
i have also a Hindi Language blog, i have installed theme but i am unable to change font size in the theme, , my blog is Hindi Blog, all words are showing good expect Hindi font. can you help me
Hi Neeraj,
Please ask your theme developer for support. Most probably the fonts used by your themes don’t have good support for the language.
Thanks for the msg, my problem has solved, i have added this code in the theme
.entry-content p {
font-size: 16px !important;
}
after that font showing good
Thank you for share..
Very useful
Another way to change the size is to switch to text view in the TinyMCE editor, wrap the text you wish to change size on and use html tags and attributes to change the size of the text. An example is one below:
This text will be 65% of the normal size of text on the page
Hello, I’m trying to change Title font size of my post. I previewed my post and the title size looks too small. How do I make the title size bigger? I am using Awaken Theme on WordPress. I don’t know how to change code in style.css
Very elaborative and to the point I loved the video it made change the whole look of my site
Very useful and practical article
Hi,
I am trying to change the font size in my menu above my pages, how do I do that?
Thanks very much
The TinyMCE really worked! Thanks alot☺
How about changing font size in comments to blog posts?
Thanks for the TinyMCE plugin suggestion for this. Super simple and it works great. I appreciate it!
Hey Naomi,
Glad you found it useful
You may also want to subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials.
really helpful. my site is also suffering from low font size . is there is any way to solve this through style.css
Thanks. Nice Post..
I too, would like to learn how to change font size in the style sheet.
Thank GOD I found this article!
OMG. You are wonderful. That plugin is so simple and exactly what I needed. Thanks
Thanks for this very helpful post
Thanks. very helpful.
the point to change size of font etc has gone from the face bar
Thanks for the help!
Thank you very much for a great tutorial. Very soothing voice that’s clear and easy to understand, too. I appreciate you!
Unfortunately, this is only available to paid accounts. If you’re using WordPress.com, there is no Plugins tab located in the Dashboard.
“On WordPress.com, we include the most popular plugin functionality within our sites automatically. As a result, WordPress.com users won’t find a Plugins tab in the Dashboard.”
Actually, it’s only available to WordPress.org accounts, which is not the same as a paid WordPress.com account. Anytime you see “WordPress” without a .com at the end, it’s safe to assume it’s referring to the self-hosted .org, which WPBeginner tips & tutorials are aimed at. I know it can be confusing for people who use .com, but the two really are very different animals. When looking for help, you’ll get better results if you’re sure to include “wordpress.com” in your search terms.
I have tried to download TinyMCE several times without success. When I try to open the files. everything appears to be written in Arabic (characters look like that!) Any other suggestions as I’m new to WordPress and would love to get my website up and running. Thank you!
NO Thanks for NOT publishing my comment. I did see in another comment that I cannot use TinyMCE or plug ins on WordPress.org.
I’m still not sure about paragraph headings, though. I have that button, but I didn’t seem to be able to get it to give a dropdown menu or anything.
One main reason I got frustrated with WP was that I couldn’t seem to change font size and the text of my blog always seemed too small.
thank you so much.
i am relieved now that i have this plugin
Thank you so much for the tutorial! I was able to change the font size in my posts…. but I cannot figure out how to change the font for the widgets in my sidebar… any suggestions?
Please see our guide on how to add custom styles to WordPress widgets.
I sure wish someone could explain how we can change the post title font size without the change affecting the Recent Posts widget. I am using the basic Twelve Thirteen. It offers advanced Post Title font changes with a link found directly under the title. But totally useless, since any changes equally affect the Recent Posts box!
What about changing the font size of the Title….when I try to do this, the Recent Posts in the sidebar increases in size and looks terrible. No way is offered to resolve this anywhere that I can find…and I’ve been looking for hours. But unless I reduce the title size, the default size is so large it takes up half the opening page.
Are these option, including the plugin font size options not available if you host your own site or something? I did everything everybody says to do, dragging the font size button to the bar etc., and I get no option to resize fonts no matter what.
I also have no “paragraph” menu.
Thanks.
We have updated the article with new instructions. Hope this resolves the issue. Thanks for notifying us.