Using fractional em's in CSS's font-size property

JohnB is right. We're still rendering in pixels whatever the size unit we use, and small changes in ems will not change the displayed size:

For example, for text originally displaying at a height of 20px*, we can see that there is no effective change when a rule is added to make it .99em of its original height:

20 * 0.99 = 19.8 

The browser can't display .8 of a pixel, so (assuming it will round up) it will still display it as 20px high.

Though it appears that browsers do not always round off as expected:

http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2010/02/10/rounding-off/

http://ejohn.org/blog/sub-pixel-problems-in-css/

*Yep, I know a font-size of 20px doesn't alway mean it's displayed at 20px!