Cross-platform e-mail text size problems

Specifically, between Macs and Win boxes.

I carry on e-mail correspondence with several Win users, most of whom
just don't know enough about text sizes or fonts to be useful. Further,
I started using Macs in 1988 and haven't looked back -- or used a Win
box for more than a few weeks -- since, so I basically have no
understanding at all of how Win deals with e-mail text.

Perhaps complicating the issue is the fact that some of them use a mail
client on Windows, and some use web mail -- gmail, yahoo, aol.

For most of the messages sent to me, the text looks just fine, but there
are some oddities:

I use Verdana 11 to compose messages in Mail. One fellow told me it
showed up for him as Times New Roman 12.

He claims to use Arial 12 for his mail; his text shows up here as Arial
16.

I dragged some text from MT-NW into a message, as Monaco 12; he said it
showed up as Monaco 6 -- essentially unreadable.

Messages from another one of the people in the group show up here as
Arial 9, which is nearly too tiny for me to read.

So here's the question: How are font choices and text sizes handled with
cross-platform e-mail? I'm trying to understand what's happening so I
can fix it, and more importantly, so I can help my Win-using friends to
fix it.

I'm using Mail on OS X 10.4.11, BTW.

Can anyone shed any light on the matter?

thx

Isaac
.

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