Introducing Font Formatting

Formatted text is capable of communicating far more effectively than unformatted text. Editors and publishers have long recognized the value of italics, boldface, and other character formatting in calling attention to text. Choices of font communicate subtly (or not so subtly) about the type of information contained in text, and how that information should be viewed.

In Word, you can apply an extraordinarily wide range of formats to specific characters. As already mentioned, Word calls this font formatting. It includes the following:

• Choice of font

• Font size (measured in points)

• Font style (for example, bold or italic)

• Underlining

• Font effects (for example, strikethrough, superscript, or emboss)

• Font color

• Scaling (font stretching)

• Spacing between groups of letters

• Position of text on a line

• Kerning (spacing between specific pairs of letters)

• Text animation

As already mentioned, you can control any type of font formatting through the Format, Font dialog box (see Figure 4.2).

Every aspect of controlling a font's formatting can be found here. However, when it comes to the formatting you do most, Word usually has quicker ways to get the job done than by using this dialog box.

Quick and Easy Font Formatting

In many cases, the fastest way to apply a format is to use Word's Formatting toolbar (see Figure 4.3). In other cases, it can be easier to use a keyboard shortcut. For example, pressing Ctrl+B may be a faster way of boldfacing selected text than locating and clicking the Bold button on the Formatting toolbar. Either way, you first select the text you want to format and then click the button or press the keyboard shortcut to format your text.

There are plenty of keyboard shortcuts for formatting text, including many that don't have Formatting toolbar counterparts. Table 4.1 lists the Formatting toolbar buttons that apply to font (character) formatting and corresponding keyboard shortcuts where they exist.

Choosing Fonts and Sizes

Word can work with thousands of Windows-compatible fonts, including TrueType fonts (by default) and Adobe PostScript fonts.

The easiest way to choose a font is via the Font drop-down box on the Formatting toolbar (see Figure 4.4). To do this, select the text you want to format, click the down arrow next to the Font drop-down box or press Ctrl+Shift+F, and scroll to and select the font you want.

Each font name in this list is formatted to reflect the appearance of the corresponding font. This makes choosing the most appropriate font much easier.

If Word doesn't display a font you expect to see listed, see "What to Do If Fonts Seem to Be Missing," in "Troubleshooting" at the end of this chapter.

Now that you've specified a font, you can specify its size, using the Font Size drop-down box on the Formatting toolbar. Select the text you want to format, click in the Font Size drop-down box (or press Ctrl+Shift+P), type or select the size you want, and press Enter.

Choosing Font Styles, Underlining, Color, and Effects

You've probably noticed that you can apply font styles from the Formatting toolbar by clicking the Bold, Italic, or Underline button, or that you can apply font styles by using the keyboard shortcuts shown earlier in Table 4.1. These and many additional options are available to you in the Font dialog box as well (refer to Figure 4.2). A quick way to display these options is to select the text you want to format, right-click it, and choose Font from the shortcut menu (make sure the Font tab is selected).

Using the Font dialog box, you can conveniently change all elements of font formatting at the same time: font, style, size, underlining, color, and effects. Choose from the corresponding Font, Font Style, and Size scroll boxes and the Effects check boxes.

Selecting Font Underlining

You can select the Underline Style of your selected text from the drop-down box. Word provides several underlining choices, including dotted, thick, dash, dot-dash, dot-dot-dash, and wave underlining. Underlining is a separate control; you can use it with any other font style or text effect.

Setting a Font Color

In the Font Color drop-down box, you can select a text color from among 40 font colors?plus Automatic, the default setting. Automatic is black, unless one of the following situations occurs:

• You have (perhaps inadvertently) changed Windows's overall text color using the Windows Control Panel.

• You are formatting text in a table, against a background shaded with a very dark color, in which case Automatic reformats the text color to white for readability.

Word, however, does not limit you to a basic palette of predefined colors. To choose another color, click More Colors at the bottom of the Font Color list; the Colors tabbed dialog box opens. In the Standard tab, you can pick from a wider palette of 124 colors, as well as 15 shades of gray. If that still isn't enough, you can manufacture a custom color through the Custom tab (see Figure 4.5).

To start creating a custom color, click a color in the Colors box. The color now appears on a slider, in varying shades from very light to very dark. You can drag the slider triangle to get the shade you want. After you choose a color, through either the Standard or the Custom tab, click OK. The color now appears in your Color box and in the text you selected in your document.

Setting Text Effects

Text effects provide even more ways to distinguish text, from basics like subscript and superscript (for formulas and trademarks) to far more decorative effects. You might be surprised at how many text effects Word provides:

• Strikethrough

• Superscript

• Subscript

• Hidden

• Small Caps

• All Caps

• Double Strikethrough

• Shadow

• Outline

• Emboss

• Engrave

Figure 4.6 shows samples of all 10 visible effects. Not all of these effects can be applied together. Sometimes, the limitations are obvious. For example, you cannot apply strikethrough and double strikethrough to the same text. Sometimes the limitations are not so obvious. For example, you cannot apply shadow or outline to text you also intend to emboss.

Notice that subscript lowers text by 3 points and reduces its size at the same time; superscript raises text by 3 points and reduces its size. If you want to change the position of subscript or superscript text, select it and use the Position controls on the Character Spacing tab of the Font dialog box.

Changing Case

One of the most common effects-related tasks is to change the case (capitalization) of selected text to (or from) all caps. You don't have to bother with displaying the Font dialog box to do this: Just press Ctrl+Shift+A.

Word also recognizes that there are several common ways to capitalize blocks of text you've selected. For example, you might want to format text as a sentence, in which only the first word is capitalized, or as a title, in which every word is capitalized. Or you might want to format text entirely lowercase.

You can quickly toggle selected text through five types of capitalization by pressing Shift+F3 repeatedly. Or you can choose the capitalization you want by selecting Format, Change Case, and selecting an option there.

Hiding Text

Hidden text is most valuable as a way to make temporary notes to yourself. (You don't have to use the Font dialog box to format text as hidden; try the Ctrl+Shift+H keyboard shortcut.) Formatting text as hidden makes it invisible by default, though you can see it by clicking the Show/Hide Paragraph Marks button. Word automatically uses hidden text to hide the contents of certain fields, notably index and table of contents entry fields.

If you print a document while hidden text is displayed, the hidden text also prints. Also, make sure that you "hide" your hidden text before you create tables of contents or indexes. Otherwise, Word might miscalculate your document's length and apply incorrect page numbers to referenced locations.

Character Spacing: Creating Typographer-Quality Documents

Word includes character spacing controls that were once available only on typesetting systems that cost tens of thousands of dollars. You don't have to be a typographer to use them, either. Simply display the Font dialog box and click the Character Spacing tab (see Figure 4.7).

There are three reasons to use the controls on this tab:

• They can help you improve the look of your documents, typically in subtle ways. Your readers will believe that your documents look a cut above the rest?even if they don't know why.

• You can use some of these features, especially scaling, to create interesting text effects without inserting graphics into your document.

• Some character spacing features can help you control the size of your document, squeezing one or more pages out?which can save you money on production, printing, and/or mailing.

Stretching Your Type with Word's Scaling Feature

Scaling allows you to stretch individual characters either horizontally or vertically. Why scale text? Generally, for design reasons. For instance, you might want to create a drop cap that drops down more than three lines at the beginning of a newsletter article. If the character is a wide one, such as W, it's likely to stretch wider than you might want. You can narrow it by scaling. (If you scale one drop cap in a document, be sure to scale all of the other drop caps equally, to be consistent.)

You can see an example of a scaled drop cap in Figure 4.8.

Scaling body text slightly can also help you fit more of it on a specific page. This is an issue especially in large directories and catalogs, where narrower text translates directly into fewer pages and lower cost.

Normally, you would use a condensed font such as Arial Narrow for this purpose. However, you might not have a condensed font available that meets your needs and fits with the rest of your document's design. Scaling lets you "fake" a condensed font. The results won't thrill a professional typographer who is familiar with the subtleties of quality font design, but for day-to-day business work, scaling does the job.

Figure 4.9 shows the difference in appearance (and size) between standard Times New Roman text and text narrowed to 95% of its normal width.

If you set scaling to one of Word's predefined settings, Word automatically shows you an immediate preview at the bottom of the Font dialog box. If you enter a custom setting, you can preview what your selected type will look like by pressing Tab to move out of the Scale drop-down box.

Controlling Spacing

Spacing complements scaling. Scaling narrows or widens the characters themselves; spacing changes the space between characters. Professional designers sometimes call this tracking.

Word's default spacing is called Normal; you can tighten or loosen spacing as much as you want. As with scaling, use spacing judiciously. Tightening your spacing just a little can save space and might even make type read faster. That's one reason advertising copy is spaced a little tighter than normal. On the other hand, over-tightening type quickly renders it illegible.

To control spacing for selected text, select either Expanded or Condensed in the Spacing drop-down box on the Font dialog box's Character Spacing tab.

In the By scroll box, set the amount by which you want to expand or narrow your spacing. The default is 1 point, and the scroll buttons increase or reduce spacing by tenths of a point. However, you can manually enter spacing values in twentieths of a point if you want (for example, 1.05 points).

Kerning: One Secret to Great-Looking Text

Kerning is similar to spacing in that it adjusts the space between letters. But whereas spacing controls the space between all letters, kerning adjusts the spacing between special pairs of letters?and then only if kerning data has been included with your font by its designer. It's used most commonly with larger font sizes.

You can see in Figure 4.10 why kerning matters. In the unkerned word WATCH at the top, the letters W and A are far apart; so are the letters A and T. The effect is subtly distracting; the word looks uneven, not quite natural. In the bottom example, kerning has been turned on. You can see that the A now slips slightly under the W, and the T is also closer to the A. It just looks better. You'll hardly ever see a professionally produced advertisement that hasn't been carefully kerned.

Why not turn on kerning all the time, for every font, size, and kerning pair that supports it? Technically, as long as the font supports it, you can. However, it might slow down your computer, plus kerning isn't really necessary for very small text, such as in classified advertisements. Here's how to decide when and whether to kern:

• First, test your computer. If you don't notice a speed difference with kerning turned on, make it part of your default settings for all text that is 7 points or higher. You'll learn how to change your font formatting defaults later in this chapter.

• For day-to-day newsletters, it's usually sufficient to turn on kerning for all headlines but skip the body text. You might set kerning to begin at 12- or 14-point text.

• For more sophisticated publications, or for high-end customer proposals, kern body text as well. Set kerning to start as low as 7-point text. Especially consider kerning if you are printing on a relatively high-resolution printer, such as a 600 dpi (dots per inch) laser printer.

• If kerning does slow down your computer, consider doing all your editing with kerning turned off, and then select the entire document and apply kerning to it before you take care of final "design tweaks," such as fixing line and page breaks. If you want, you can record a macro to select and kern your entire document.

To turn on kerning for selected text, place a check in the Kerning for Fonts check box on the Character Spacing tab. Word sets kerning to 12 Points and Above. If you want, enter a new font size in the Points and Above scroll box.

Controlling Position

The Character Spacing tab has one more feature: Position. Look at a line of text and visualize an imaginary line where the text is "sitting." That's called the baseline. The Position setting determines how far above or below the baseline text should appear.

Most users will rarely need to use Position. For instance, it's usually easier to create superscript or subscript characters using Word's keyboard shortcuts, Ctrl++ (plus sign) for superscript, and Ctrl+= (equal sign) for subscript. These keyboard shortcuts also shrink the characters in the way true subscript and superscripts should appear. However, some users find that these keyboard shortcuts shrink the size of text too much or too little, or they want more control over exactly how far from the baseline their subscripted or superscripted text moves. Position offers this control.

To set the position for selected text, choose Raised or Lowered in the Position drop-down box. Word sets the change in position to 3 points. You can scroll to increase or decrease the baseline shift, or type in a position in 1/2-point increments (for example, 2.5 points).

Animating Your Text

Now, after studying the subtleties of kerning and baseline shifts, it's time to shift to one of the most garish features ever to be found in Word: text animation.

You can apply one of six simple animations to any block of text, calling attention to it when it is viewed onscreen in Word or in Internet Explorer 3.0 or higher. Netscape Navigator or other Web browsers do not recognize text animations. They are also not recognized by Word 95, Word 6, or other older versions of Word?and, of course, they don't print. Table 4.2 describes each of these animations.

You might use text animation when you are sharing a document file (or displaying it on a corporate intranet running Internet Explorer) and you want to be especially sure that your reader looks at a specific block of text. To animate text, select it, press Ctrl+D, choose the Text Effects tab, and choose an animation from the Animations scroll box. (The Preview box shows what it will look like.)

Setting Default Font Formats

By default, Word formats your text as 12-point Times New Roman. If you find yourself changing this setting in every new document, you can save yourself some time and effort by changing Word's default settings. Follow these steps:

The new default font formatting will apply to your current document in the future, and to every document you create with the same template you're currently using.