Decenders and Internet Explorer
I didn't need another reason to hate Internet Explorer but I found one. It turns out that if you use certain fonts at certain sizes in IE then the decenders get cut off. Ok, lets break that down.
Decenders
A decender is the part of a letter (typically a lowercase letter) that drops down below the baseline. Here are the usual suspects: g,j,p,q,y. On occasion you may come across a font that include some other decenders but they are rare, and they are certainly not web safe fonts.
Quick Note
If you aren't using IE6 or IE7 everything should look completely fine with the examples below
What Fonts? What Sizes?
I have not done a lot of testing, but this problem definitely occurs with Arial Black and Impact at sizes larger than 2.5em. Here are a couple of examples:
quick gypsy
quick gypsy
What's the solution
The only way I have found to solve this problem is to add some bottom padding. It's not always ideal, but it works.
quick gypsy
quick gypsy