Mercury porosimetry has been applied to characterize the pore structure of fine coals particles. Interparticle voids and compressibility effects on the mercury intrusion data were examined. It is found that coal compressibility has a significant effect on mercury porosimetry data when pressure P > 20 MPa. The compressibility of the two coals used was determined to be 3.13 x 10(-10) m(2) N-1 and 2.50 x 10(-10) m(2) N-1 for CA and GO coals, respectively. Fractal dimension analysis provides a "fingerprint" to distinguish the effect of coal compression from the pore filling process during mercury intrusion. It is shown that fractal dimension can be evaluated from the compressibility corrected pore volume data. Results from the present study suggest that statistic self-similarity of the fractal dimension perspective is limited by certain artificial effects, such as crushing and grinding. Different surface irregularities exist over different pore size ranges, and a single fractal dimension value can only be used to describe the surface irregularity within a limited pore size range. The average fractal dimensions in the pore size range of 6-60 nm were found to be 2.71 and 2.43 for CA and GO coals, respectively.