#### 4.4.1 Selecting font sizes

The most common thing to change about the appearance of fonts is their size. The font size of any context can be easily changed by setting the `fontSize` property for that context. Its value is a number: negative numbers make the font smaller, positive numbers larger. An example is given below:

      c4 c4 \set fontSize = #-3
      f4 g4

This command will set `font-size` (see below) in all layout objects in the current context. It does not change the size of variable symbols, such as beams or slurs.

The font size is set by modifying the `font-size` property. Its value is a number indicating the size relative to the standard size. Each step up is an increase of approximately 12% of the font size. Six steps is exactly a factor two. The Scheme function `magstep` converts a `font-size` number to a scaling factor.

LilyPond has fonts in different design sizes: the music fonts for smaller sizes are chubbier, while the text fonts are relatively wider. Font size changes are achieved by scaling the design size that is closest to the desired size.

The `font-size` mechanism does not work for fonts selected through `font-name`. These may be scaled with `font-magnification`.

One of the uses of `fontSize` is to get smaller symbols for cue notes. An elaborate example of those is in input/test/cue-notes.ly.

##### Predefined commands

The following commands set `fontSize` for the current voice:

`\tiny`, `\small`, `\normalsize`.

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