Use the 'xfontsel' (from the xbase-clients package) to see what fonts look like. If you run it with the -print option it will print the font you have selected into the shell... for easy copy-and-paste after. Anyway, it's not the font weight (the 3rd entry in the X font string) that you want to change. You want to set a higher point size. xterm -font '-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-400-*-*-*-*-*-*' 400 is a bit much for my taste :) If you want to get fonts manually and put them into the .fonts dir, see this: http://www.jukie.net/~bart/blog/small-fonts Your interests are the opposite to mine -- I wanted smaller fonts -- but you can use the same scripts and HOWTO. -Bart -- WebSig: http://www.jukie.net/~bart/sig/