I think other comments have kind of addressed that for most of us in this 
discussion group, we knew that the em isn't one "M". 

Regarding your article, I have a few thoughts:
1. Experiments have results. For the sake of your readers, provide the results 
of the experiment. 
2. explain the experiment. I can see you've bordered out the width and height, 
but for a reader unfamiliar with em  calculation, they won't understand the 
relationship that pixels will have to it. 
3. I'm struggling to understand your thesis or argument. Is it that the em is 
not the best letter to measure by? Or is it that  the em isn't always an "em"? 
The statement "I have a really big m" doesn't support either of the arguments. 
That's fine if it doesn't, but you should clearly, in the first two sentences, 
state your argument/thesis. 

A few other things to consider:

"em" is generally thought as the relative width of the relevant font. The CSS2 
spec, however, doesn't say that explicitly. It refers to the "em square"
"ex" is relative height of the relevant font. 
Some UAs may base x-height on a measurement between "o" and the baseline. 
I've read where the em is calculated based on the "default" font size. so you 
may want to rerun the experiment with a default font. 

Also:
I think if you're making the argument that an em isn't always an "M", why not 
also check to see if an "ex" is an "x"




</email>
<signature id="paceaux">
   Frank M Taylor 
   http://frankmtaylor.com
   @paceaux
</signature>

On Jan 23, 2012, at 11:23 PM, Ghodmode wrote:

> I wrote a new blog entry inspired by past discussions on WebDesign-L
> and CSS-D: "I Hava a Really Big 'm'"
> 
> <blockquote>
>    Contemporary wisdom says that we should use the relative unit ‘em‘
> for most, if not all, element measurements in web design.
> 
>    So, how big is an ‘em’? I set up a small experiment to tell me just that.
> 
>    Continue reading →
> http://www.ghodmode.com/blog/2012/01/i-have-a-really-big-m/
> </blockquote>
> 
> I appreciate any comments, questions, or complaints.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> --
> Ghodmode
> http://www.ghodmode.com
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