Shape and display

"Ever wonder why some text seems easier to read than others? A few basic formatting changes can make reading text much easier. Factors like line spacing, font choice, font size and margins are key to legibility. "

Labels: Fonts, Formatting

Quick graphic reinforcement

Labels: Customize, Fonts, Graphics, Tips

That was no font, that was my typeface

Words into Type

Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works

The Elements of Typographic Style

by Robert Bringhurst ISBN 0881791326

A font can be defined as a collection of characters with the same style and size. A typeface is the design of the characters regardless of size or style. The terms are used interchangeably today.

Labels: Fonts

Some more of those things I'm sure I used to know

"Bell Labs engineer, Don Macpherson, went to instruct their first client, the Mayo Clinic, in the use of the new (touch tone phone system). He felt the need for a fresh and unambiguous name for the # symbol. His reasoning that led to the new word was roughly that it had eight points, so ought to start with octo-. He was apparently at that time active in a group that was trying to get the Olympic medals of the athlete Jim Thorpe returned from Sweden, so he decided to add thorpe to the end."

Labels: Fonts, Formatting, Reference

Minimize white space

"When justifying text in Microsoft Word use the hyphenation feature to improve the look of your page. (Without hyphens). . . unnecessary 'white space' is distributed throughout. When hyphenation is turned on the overall typographic color of the page is much more even. To enable this feature in Microsoft Word do the following: After you have justified the columns in your document, choose from the "Tools menu" > Language > then from the dropdown menu, choose "Hyphenation", then choose "Automatically hyphenate document"

Labels: Fonts, Formatting, Tips

High caliber

Shauna Kelly:

How to control bullets in Microsoft Word

Ins and outs of bullets and numbering in Word

Dubbo College :
(an easy five hours drive from Sydney, four hours from Newcastle and a ten hour drive from Melbourne and Brisbane.)



Paragraph Bullets

Troubleshooting Bullets and numbering

Also see:
Beyond Bullets.com

Beyond Bullet Points, the book



See all Topics
word

Labels: Fonts, Formatting, Tips

Shape or substance

"The legibility of a typeface should not be evaluated on its ability to generate a good word shape.

Word shape is no longer a viable model of word recognition. The bulk of scientific evidence says that we recognize a word's component letters, then use that visual information to recognize a word. In addition to perceptual information, we also use contextual information to help recognize words during ordinary reading, but that has no bearing on the word shape versus parallel letter recognition debate. "

The science of word recognition
by Kevin Larson
From EyeMagazine

Suggested by:
Microsoft Typography

Also see:
Cmabrigde



See all Topics
word

Labels: Fonts, Formatting, General

Index resource

"Have you ever tried to include a passage in a different alphabet in one of your documents, for example a quotation in Russian in an English document, only to find that you have no Cyrillic characters available? Or sent a Spanish document in electronic form to someone in Greece, only to be told that the accented Latin characters have been replaced by Greek characters? Or produced a Web page that includes technical symbols and found that it works with Windows but not with Mac OS or Unix?"

Alan Wood's Unicode Resources
Unicode fonts for Windows computers

From the Word Help file:

If you know the Unicode (hexadecimal) value of a character, you can use the ALT+X keyboard shortcut to enter the character directly in your document.

Type the Unicode (hexadecimal) value of the character. Press ALT+X.
Note: The value string can also begin with U+.

Microsoft Word replaces the string to the left of the insertion point with the character you specified.

You can also use ALT+X to display the Unicode character code for a particular character. Place the insertion point to the right of the character, and then press ALT+X. The character is replaced by its character code. Press ALT+X again to switch back to the character.

• Љ — Hex=0409
  
• א — Hex=05D0
  
• ئ — Hex=0626
  

Labels: Fonts

The other letters

• Ctrl+'
  Adds an acute accent to the character typed next

  Á

  
  
• Ctrl+'
  When followed by d or D, creates the old English character "eth"

  Ð

  
  
• Ctrl+`
  Adds a grave accent to the character typed next

  À

  
  
• Ctrl+^
  Adds a circumflex to the character typed next

  Â

  
  
• Ctrl+~
  Adds a tilde to the character typed next

  Ã

  
  
• Ctrl+:
  Adds a dieresis or umlaut to the character typed next

  Ä

  
  
• Ctrl+@
  Adds a degree symbol above the letters a and A; used primarily in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish

  Å

  
  
• Ctrl+&
  Creates combination or Germanic characters based on the character typed next

  Æ

  or

  ß

  
  
• Ctrl+,
  Adds a cedilla to the character typed next

  Ç

  
  
• Ctrl+/
  Adds a slash through the letters o and O; used primarily in Danish and Norwegian

  Ø

  
  
• Alt+Ctrl+?
  Creates an inverted question mark

  ¿

  
  
• Alt+Ctrl+!
  Creates an inverted exclamation mark
  

  ¡

  
  

Labels: Fonts, Formatting

Real world fonts

"I honestly believe typeface selection is one of the most transparent ways of detecting good - and bad - design. You can tell plenty about a designer merely by the typefaces he/she chooses. So you'd be wise to start with trusted faces, and you'd be even wiser to know something about the history of each typeface."

Labels: Fonts

More typography

Kerning

Adjusting (increasing or decreasing) the space between adjoining type characters.

Kearning pair

Two adjoining type characters to which a particular kearning value is applied.

Kearning value

The space between two adjoining type characters. This value is usually measured in em.

1. Select the text you want to change.
   
2. On the Format menu, click Font, and then click the Character Spacing tab.
   
3. Do one of the following:
   
   • Expand or condense space evenly between all the selected characters
     
     Click Expanded or Condensed in the Spacing box, and then specify how much space you want in the By box.
     
     
   • Kern characters that are above a particular point size
     
     Select the Kerning for fonts check box, and then enter the point size in the Points and above box.

Note: Selecting Expanded or Condensed alters the spacing between all selected letters by the same amount. Kerning alters the spacing between particular pairs of letters.

Microsoft Typography:
A Disagreeably Facetious Type Glossary

WebStyleGuide.com:
Webstyle Guide - Typography

About.com:
Typography Tutorials

Typographica
a journal of typography featuring news, observations, and open commentary on fonts and typographic design.
Here's the RSS connection:
Typographica Feed



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word

Labels: Fonts, Formatting

List maker

1. Open Word.
   
2. Use Alt+F11 to open the Visual Basic editor.
   
3. Choose Insert>Module from the Menu.
   
4. Copy and Paste this code in the module.
   
5. Return to Word and go to: Tools>Macro>Macros.


6. Select and run "InstalledFonts".

Sub InstalledFonts()

Dim F As Integer
Dim InstalledFonts As Table

  'Open a fresh document

Set FreshDoc = Documents.Add

   'Create a table and define the header

Set InstalledFonts = FreshDoc.Tables.Add(Selection.Range, FontNames.Count + 1, 2)
With InstalledFonts
.Borders.Enable = False
.Cell(1, 1).Range.Font.Name = "Arial"
.Cell(1, 1).Range.Font.Bold = 1
.Cell(1, 1).Range.InsertAfter "Font Name"
.Cell(1, 2).Range.Font.Bold = 1
.Cell(1, 2).Range.InsertAfter "Example"
End With

   'Loop through all the fonts and add them to the table

For F = 1 To FontNames.Count
With InstalledFonts
.Cell(F + 1, 1).Range.Font.Name = "Arial"
.Cell(F + 1, 1).Range.Font.Size = 10
.Cell(F + 1, 1).Range.InsertAfter FontNames(F)
.Cell(F + 1, 2).Range.Font.Name = FontNames(F)
.Cell(F + 1, 2).Range.Font.Size = 10
.Cell(F + 1, 2).Range.InsertAfter "ABCDEFG abcdefg 1234567890 &$@"
End With
Next F
   'Sort the names of the fonts

InstalledFonts.Sort SortOrder:=wdSortOrderAscending

End Sub

Labels: Fonts

Or do you love it?

" This study sought to determine if certain personalities and uses are associated with various fonts. Using an online survey, participants rated the personality of 20 fonts using 15 adjective pairs. In addition, participants viewed the same 20 fonts and selected which uses were most appropriate.

Results suggested that personality traits are indeed attributed to fonts based on their design family (Serif, Sans-Serif, Modern, Monospace, Script/Funny) and are associated with appropriate uses.

Implications of these results to the design of online materials and websites are discussed."

Labels: Fonts, Formatting

Stop them up front

Labels: Customize, Fonts, Formatting, Tips, Tutorials

A look see

I haven't seen, lately, how many fonts you can have on a machine, but I know it's a lot more than earlier versions.

Here is a free download that will create an HTML file that will show all the fonts installed on your computer.

"Using FontList, you can change the predefined sample text, exclude seldom used fonts from the list and change the path for the HTML file.

In your browser, you can change the style of a font and zoom in on a font. You can also view the character map of a font. And, for some, maybe the most important feature, you can create a print out of all your fonts.

Labels: Fonts

Ugly when you look close

"From the company that popularized Arial, here are three examples of bad typography in Microsoft Word.

Bad typesetting in Word finds its way into résumés, business plans, research papers, government documents, even published books.

These small inconsistencies and imperfections may be un-noticeable in small doses, but paragraph-after-paragraph they stack up-resulting in ugly, visually in-cohesive documents.

Word isn’t for professional typography work, but that's no excuse for these typography sins.

Arial:



Garamond



Here's one that shows it can be done right:

BatangChe





Examples of Bad Typography



See all Topics
word

Labels: Fonts

Good for non-commercial purposes

"Here you'll find one of the most unique archives out there for free fonts. We not only scoured the corners of the earth in search of famous fonts, but also helped create them! Explore around and download to your heart's delight! We have a vast selection from Willy Wonka to Honda to Pizza Hut. All fonts are free to download for any non-commercial purpose. Enjoy the fonts!"

Labels: Fonts

Oh!

Labels: Fonts

Comic vs. Arial

"Summary: This study investigated the effect that a font has on the reader's perception of an email. Based on a previous study by Shaikh, Chaparro, and Fox (2006), a sample email message was presented in three fonts (Calibri, Comic Sans, and Gigi). The three chosen fonts represented a high, medium, and low level of congruency for email messages.

Labels: Fonts

Everything you need to know

If you right click on a font file in Windows its basic properties are displayed. The Font properties extension adds several new property tabs to this properties dialog box. These include information relating to font origination and copyright, the type sizes to which hinting and smoothing are applied, and the code pages supported by extended character sets.

It also will tell you if the font can be embeddedand/or edited in a document.

Protected

The font may not be embedded, copied, or modified. If you use a protected font in a document and if the document is opened on a computer that does not have the font installed on it, a font substitution occurs. Word substitutes the closest font available on the computer for the missing protected font.

Print/Preview

The font is embedded and temporarily loaded on the target computer. Documents that contain print/preview fonts must be opened read-only, and no edits are stored in the document. Embedding a font of this nature has the least impact on file size increase.

Editable

The font behaves just like the print/preview fonts, except that you may also apply the font to other text in the same document.

Installable

The font is installed on the target computer permanently when you open the document. This allows you to use the new fonts as if you installed the fonts directly into Windows yourself. This type of embedded font has the greatest impact on file size because the entire font or fonts are included with the document.

Versionand Features tabs

The Version tab includes version and date information. The Features tab describes the font in terms of number of glyphs, number of kerning pairs, the possible existence of a euro symbol and the presence of embedded bitmaps within the font.

Linkstab

If a font doesn't include a Web site URL, but does include a 'vendor ID code' a link will be provided to Microsoft's font vendor database.

Labels: Fonts