What Is Large Print? Font Size, Spacing and Giant Print

What font size is large print?

The short answer is 18 point for body text. That figure comes from APH's Research-Based Guidelines for the Development of Documents in Large Print. It sets 18 point for the body of a text, 20 point for subheadings and 22 point for headings. The American Council of the Blind (ACB), whose Board of Publications adopted its own large print guidelines in 2022, uses the same three sizes.

Other bodies draw the line a little lower, which is why you will see different numbers online. RNIB describes large print as generally 16 to 18 point. The National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS) at the Library of Congress says large print is most commonly 16 to 18 point, and notes that the United States Postal Service standard for free mailing of materials for blind people sets its minimum for large print at 14 point.

We work to 18 point because it is the strictest of these lines and the only one that cannot be called something less. APH names anything above 12 and below 18 point "enlarged print", and says it does not meet the requirements of large print. So when a sheet on this site says large print, its body text is at least 18 point. You can choose 24 or 28 point on every page.

A point is one seventy-second of an inch, but type size is not a ruler measurement of the letters. The height of a letter depends on the typeface, so two fonts at 18 point can look different. APH asks that the lowercase x and the letter t stand at least an eighth of an inch high, which is one more reason to choose a typeface with generous letter shapes.

What is the difference between large print and giant print?

Large print and giant print are steps on the same scale. RNIB gives the numbers most clearly: regular print is usually 10 or 12 point, large print is generally 16 to 18 point, and giant print is anything larger than that. There is no single cut-off that every publisher follows, so check the point size printed on a book or sheet rather than trusting the label.

For your own documents, treat it this way. Use 18 point when the reader can manage it and you want a page that does not look unusual. Use 24 point when 18 is a strain. Use 28 point or more for wall sheets, score cards, and people whose sight has declined further. Bigger is not always better, because a very large size breaks a sentence across many short lines and makes the eye jump. A reader who is happy at 24 point may find 36 point tiring.

The most useful test is the reader. Print one page at 18, 24 and 28 point, hand them over, and ask which they would like to read for an hour. The large print maker prints all three from the same text.

Which fonts are best for large print?

Plain sans serif faces, with no decoration. APH says fonts for people with low vision should not have serifs, and lists APHont, Verdana, Tahoma, Helvetica and Antique Olive as acceptable. ACB names Arial, not bold, as its base font. RNIB names Arial as well, and also accepts Helvetica, Calibri and Verdana.

Avoid script, handwriting and ornamental faces, and avoid italics. APH says italics are typically avoided because they are difficult for many people with low vision, and offers four alternatives: set the words in bold, underline them, put them in quotation marks, or use a contrasting color. RNIB also advises against underlining and against long stretches in capital letters, though one or two capitalised words are fine. On this site we use bold for stress, which is where APH and RNIB agree.

The sheets on this site are set in Atkinson Hyperlegible, a typeface the Braille Institute designed for readers with low vision. The Braille Institute makes it free for personal and commercial use. It is not on APH's list, so we say so plainly: it was designed for this purpose but has not been named by the standards. Liberation Sans, which has the same letter widths as Arial, is the alternative on every page. APH's own typeface, APHont, is offered free only to qualified users for non-commercial purposes, so we do not use it on a public site.

How much spacing, margin and contrast does large print need?

APH recommends line spacing of 1.25, and that lines run about 39 to 43 characters. ACB's guidelines say 1.15. RNIB's Clear Print guidance says the space between lines should be at least two points more than the type size. We use 1.25.

Set the text left aligned with a ragged right edge, not justified. Do not indent paragraphs. Separate them with a blank line. Use one column, because APH notes that the hardest thing a person with low vision does is shift the eye from the end of one line to the start of the next, and columns double or triple that effort. ACB asks for margins of an inch on the top, left and right, and we use an inch on all four sides.

Black on white gives the best contrast, according to APH. Some people find white paper glaring, and for them APH suggests black text on ivory, antique white, eggshell, light beige, pastel yellow or pastel pink paper. It says gray should never be used in documents meant for people with low vision, for text or for graphs, so the sheets here use pure black lines. Choose matte paper. RNIB advises against glossy paper because of reflection, and says paper should be thick enough that print does not show through from the other side. Every printable page here offers a white or a cream background.

Is there a legal standard for large print?

Not for the size of print in a document. The Americans with Disabilities Act asks for effective communication, and the guidance on ADA.gov lists information in large print among the ways to give it to people who are blind or have vision loss, alongside Braille, audio recordings and screen-reader formats. It does not name a point size. The character-size rules in the ADA Standards for Accessible Design (section 703) are written for signs, not printed pages, so the ADA does not set 18 point for documents.

For websites and digital files, the federal guidance at Section508.gov asks for a text contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1, and advises leaving text size under the reader's control so it can be zoomed. That is a screen rule, not a print rule.

So large print is a professional standard, not a statute. The organizations named above are the ones to quote. If you produce documents for a service, a church or a care home, write down which one you follow and stay with it.

How do you print anything in large print at home?

You do not need special software. Any word processor will do the job.

First, set the type. Select all the text, choose Arial, Verdana or Tahoma, and set the size to 18 point. Set line spacing to 1.25 or a little more. Turn off justified alignment, remove any columns, and remove italics, replacing them with bold.

Second, set the page. Use one-inch margins, black text on white paper, and a matte paper of at least ordinary office weight. If white glares, print on pale cream or ivory paper.

Third, check the result. Print one page and read it at arm's length. If it is comfortable, print the rest. If not, go to 24 point.

If you would rather not fiddle with settings, paste the text into the large print maker and download a PDF that is already set up this way, with nothing uploaded. It also helps to see the standards used in a finished sheet, so look at the lined paper with bold lines for handwriting, the check register with wide rows, or a hymn sheet for a group.

Some things are worth starting from a ready-made sheet. The same standard is built into the large print Yahtzee score sheet and the large print bingo cards for game afternoons, the large print grocery list for errands, the large print calendar for 2027 for planning, and the large print Christmas carols for singing together. Each one shows its point size on the page. Reference sheets such as the large print alphabet chart and large print number chart are gathered on the large print charts page, and card and dice sheets on the large print games page.

Try not to enlarge a finished page on a photocopier. The layout was built for small type, so lines run to the edge and the margins disappear. It is better to reset the type size before you print than to blow the page up afterwards. An activity coordinator who wants a wall-size version should set the size to 28 point, choose 11 x 17 inch paper, and print it directly.