Meta font

Appearance → Customize → Design → Blog → Meta font.

Out of the box the meta line reads a notch under body text, at a regular weight, in the case you typed, with no tracking. Quiet.

What it reaches

One control, because these are one design element in several markups. Changing “meta” and having it only change some of them would be the surprising behaviour.

• The meta row — categories, date, comment count — in the listing and on a single post
• The tag list under a post
• Comment metadata — author, date, permalink
• The Post Date, Post Author and Post Terms blocks

So a Query Loop you build on a page picks up the same meta styling as the theme’s own archive.

Meta colour

Design → Blog → Meta color, just below. Empty means “follow the text colour”.

It reaches exactly the same lines the font does — with one exclusion. Widget lists, blockquote citations and the mobile menu’s close label borrow the meta look but not this colour, because a colour meant for a byline would repaint the site’s chrome.

A grey around #767676 is the usual choice: clearly secondary, and still passing 4.5:1 on white.

The small-caps line

Every release before 1.5 drew this line as small caps: 11px, uppercase, 0.3px of tracking, at the heading weight. If your site predates 1.5 those exact values are written into this control — preserved on update rather than changed under a published blog.

To take the current, plainer line, clear the size, weight, spacing and case boxes.

To go the other way on a new site, set:

The face follows your headings

Left on Same as heading font, the meta line tracks whatever your headings use. Set it to Same as base font if you want the metadata to read as prose rather than as a label — that pairs well with the plain 1.5 default.

Related

• Meta position — above the title or below
• Element colours