CSS and line height

One of the vexations in the new design of this page is the line spacing in quotations. I like to quote, and I like to set off quotations clearly. This, after all, is why we have italics. And now (at last!) Web browsers render italics well. So, everything is great!

Great indeed, except that I don't know what font you happen to have. If you're reading this on a Macintosh right now, you probably see the quotations in Hoefler Text.

If you don't have a Macintosh and aren't a designer, you probably don't have Hoefler. So, we try Baskerville. But maybe you don't have Baskerville? We'll try Georgia. You've got Georgia, and it's a good font!

It's a good font, but it's got a much larger x-height, and it really wants more space between lines. And, as far as I know, there's no way in CSS to say, “You can use Hoefler or Georgia, but if you do use Georgia, I want extra leading!”

The real underlying issue is that, when you say “12pt type”, there's no really precise meaning to what that 12 points means.