setting base fontsize to 9

Question

Is it possible to set base font-size to <10 as in newspapers.

Here is sample code

\documentclass[9pts]{article} 
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\lipsum 
\end{document}

Answer 1

If you are choosing scrartcl, instead of articleyou could do that.

\documentclass[9pt]{scrartcl}

\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-5]
\end{document}

Answer 2

You have a few options,

1. Use another document class, such as Koma-script as in @Jan's answer

2. If you want to stick to the standard class, you can define your own \normalsize etc.

A minimal example is,

\def\normalsize{\@setfontsize\normalsize{9}{11pt}}

In standard class' definition of \normalsize there are other stuff, such as display skips, etc. You would probably like to redefine \small etc similar.