Google Docs allows you to easily customize the font size for your entire document. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to change the default font size.
Select All Text
The first step is to select all the text in your document that you want to change the font size for. To do this:
- Click anywhere in your document to place the cursor
- Press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Mac) to select all text
This will highlight all the text in your document.
Change Font Size
With all the text selected, you can now change the font size:
- Click the Font size dropdown on the toolbar
- Select your desired font size
All the selected text will now change to the chosen font size.
Here are some common font sizes used:
- 10 pt – Small print
- 12 pt – Normal body text
- 14 pt – Easy reading
- 18 pt – Section headings
- 24 pt+ – Title text
You can also choose a custom font size like 15 pt or 17 pt if you prefer something in between the common sizes.
Set Default Font Size
Rather than changing the font size manually every time, you can set a default font size for all new documents:
- Click Format > Paragraph styles > Normal text
- Click Update ‘Normal text’ to match
- Click Options
- Check Save as my default styles
Now anytime you create a new document, the default font size will be applied automatically.
Change Font Size for Specific Text
If you only want to change the font size for certain parts of text:
- Highlight the text you want to change
- Click the Font size dropdown
- Choose your desired size
You can customize headings, subheadings, body text, captions, etc individually this way.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Some handy keyboard shortcuts to change font size:
- Ctrl+Shift+> – Increase font size
- Ctrl+Shift+< – Decrease font size
- Ctrl+0 – Reset font size to default
Tips
- Use larger font sizes for titles and headings so they stand out
- Font sizes between 12-14 pt are ideal for body text readability
- Be consistent with font sizes for similar sections
- Too small a font size can make text hard to read
Changing the font size in Google docs is easy and allows great customization for all sorts of documents. Set your desired defaults so new docs will be correctly formatted automatically.