Should we set a default font size of 19px on main?

[joelanman]

Elements used to set a default font size of 19px on the main element, this is our default font size for text on GOV.UK.

In the new prototype kit, we are using global styles to set <p> to 19px, but other elements would be 16px. A good example would be someone adding an <a> element to their prototype - the font size will be wrong by default.

[NickColley]

Potentially we would consider extending the global styles to mirror Elements if there is a need?

[dashouse]

Before we do this it will need to be considered along with alphagov/govuk-frontend#858 which introduces a root-font-size variable for a conversion to rems.

Won't make any difference to this specific problem but the implementation should probably wait.

This is an interesting problem though, to some degree I think we have considered <a>'s would be implemented inside <p>'s or <li>'s and not so much on their own. We used to set a size on them, but that didn't make sense when they were inside a paragraph or heading as they need to inherit that size.

[hannalaakso]

For context: user of prototype kit noticed that font size of links on Task list is not being set.

[dashouse]

Isn't that an issue with app-task-list__task-name not having the font size defined?

[joelanman]

possibly, but they used to get their font size from 19px being set on main

[ruthhammond]

Let's talk to Frontend team about this.

[ruthhammond]

Should this be addressed by global styles in Frontend?

[joelanman]

closing as it has not come up recently