CSS: Understanding and adjusting leading / line-height of fonts
css, font-face, font-size
Solution
Note that the remaining/extra space is typically a symptom of the font being used, as designated by its designer.
Thus, the 80px includes the allocated white space above and/or below. Additional white space above is typically provided to allow for accented characters, which would otherwise require the letter itself to be compressed- producing an inconsistent typeface.
See here & here for further information.
Line height refers to the total height of the typeface, inclusive of any allocated whitespace.
Problem
A very similar question was asked here but the really answered sufficiently... The CSS line-height property controls the amount of white space above the letters. Making it bigger/smaller spaces rows of text farther/closer together. But if you set the line height to the exact same value as the font-size, the text will still have white space above them. So this DOESN'T quite work... ``` div { height: 80px; } span { font-size : 80px; line-height : 80px; } <div> <span>Foo</span> </div> ``` http://jsfiddle.net/s_d_p/yMHVs/ The degree to which the enclosed text actually matches the container height seems to differ from font to font. So my question is two parts: What are we actually adjusting when we set line-height? Is there a way to remove it entirely so that letter fit precisely inside their container?