Viewing Font Size in Mail

I have my default message size in mail set to Arial 12, because that's a plenty-big-enough font for most people and it looks professional...except those of us with high-res monitors. It looks tiny on my screen. Is there any way to keep the default outgoing message size Arial 12 while changing the way my screen displays it without changing my screen's resolution? I know I've seen a "Never Display Fonts Smaller Than Size ____" option somewhere...I thought it was in mail, but I can't find it anywhere, so it may be in FireFox or something else. I can use Command-+ to make it bigger, but that gets tedious doing it for every message. Is there a way to set it to default? Thanks a lot.

-James

Try this:

defaults write com.apple.mail MinimumHTMLFontSize 12

Obviously, 12 is the font size. This will change the size of the messages while viewing.

Oh man, you're the greatest. Thanks for the help!

No problem. That is what we are here for.

small fonts in Mail programme

Thank you mdfuller, I have the same problem.
you suggest the following:

Try this:

defaults write com.apple.mail MinimumHTMLFontSize 12

Since I am only a tyro would you explain how to enter this line. I am sure it should be done via the Terminal app; however I am not sure how to do this from the opening page of Terminal

FWS-Macbook:~ montfortmissionaires$