Using Windows NT Workstation 4.0

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Making Text Stand Out with Fonts

In this chapter:

Font? Typeface? Point size? What's that all about?

Use fonts to make text easier to read

I have some new fonts. What do I do now?

How to keep track of which font is which

I need to add special characters to my documents

Need just the right look for that special document? Fonts let you dress up text so it looks great and is easy to read...

Pick up any newspaper or magazine--or, for that matter, this book. Pay no attention to the words for now; instead, just look at the way those words are arranged on the page. You'll see a mixture of large and small letters, from big bold headlines to tiny footnotes. You might even see some fancy script that would be right at home on a wedding invitation.

If the designer was on the ball, those words aren't just randomly arranged on the page, either. Instead, the size and shape and placement of the letters have been carefully chosen to help guide your eye to the most important parts of the page. The big bold headlines signal the start of a new section, while the body of each story is displayed in type that's large enough for you to read without squinting.

You don't need to be a high-paid designer to perform the same typographic magic with your documents. Windows has all the tools you need to create documents that look like they were done by a desktop publishing genius. Each of those different typographic styles is called a font, and once you learn how fonts work, you're ready to put together your own front page.

What is a font, anyway, and why should I care?

Imagine how confusing the world would be if everyone dressed exactly alike. How would you tell the police officer from the butcher, or the auto mechanic from the baseball umpire? That's why, over the years, we've come up with uniforms that help us see at a glance what people do for a living. The police officer has a blue uniform, the butcher a white smock; the mechanic is dressed in greasy overalls, while the umpire is wearing a chest protector. Underneath all those outfits, of course, they're just people.

The words and letters you use in your documents operate exactly the same way. Letters, numbers, and characters all start as basic shapes--a capital A always looks like a tepee with a crossbar, for example--but you, as the type designer, can blow up a letter or shrink it, dress it in dark colors, or give it fancy decorations.

There's more to a font than just a pretty (type)face

There's plenty of technical jargon in every font, but it doesn't have to be confusing. The font is the complete description of the typed characters, including all the following attributes:

Plain English, please!

What's the difference between a font and a typeface? The font includes all the characters of a particular size, color, shape, and design. The typeface, on the other hand, is the detailed description of the shape of each letter, without regard to its size or other characteristics. Arial is a typeface, while 10 point Arial Italic is a font. Today, many people use the terms interchangeably, and in casual use there's no confusion.

For a quick illustration of how different typefaces can represent the same shapes, look at the letters in Figure 16.1. In every case, you can easily recognize the basic shape, but these examples illustrate the nearly infinite number of ways you can draw those same characters so that they have some personality.

Fig. 16.1

The letters are the same, but the look is completely different. Different fonts can give your words some personality.

What can I do with fonts?

Every time you press a key--the letter A, let's say--on your computer's keyboard, it sends a message to Windows: "Hey! I'm sending up an A--put it on the screen!" The trouble is, because that letter has no uniform, you have no way of telling what it's supposed to do. So before Windows puts it on the screen, it looks for your instructions as to how you want it displayed.

For a banner newspaper headline that you want readers to see from 10 feet away, you would probably use thick, dark letters with no fancy frills.
For a wedding invitation, you might choose a script typeface that looks like it was written by hand.
For the fine print at the bottom of a contract, you would use the thinnest, smallest type imaginable, so that only lawyers and bald eagles can read it without a magnifying glass.

In all three cases, the basic shapes of the letters are the same--you can tell the difference between a capital A and a small b, right?--but the thickness of the lines, the decorations on the corners of each letter, the slant of the letters, and so on, are all different.

How do I tell Windows which font to use?

Most Windows programs that use text let you specify the exact look you want for those words. You can simply make a word a bit bigger, or you can change everything about it so that it takes on a completely different look. With most applications, you'll find the font choices grouped under a menu call Format.

Plain English, please!

Formatting is a catch-all word for the way you tell Windows exactly how you want a document to look when it's printed or displayed on the screen. The name of the font determines one type of formatting; other kinds of formatting define the spaces around and between the words. Other common formatting questions: Is there extra space between lines? How much room do you want for the page margins? Is there a page number on every sheet?

To specify a font in WordPad, for example, choose Format, Font. You'll see a dialog box like the one in Figure 16.2.

To give your text a makeover, follow these steps. (Make sure you have some text selected first!)

1 Choose a typeface (WordPad calls this the font). In this example, you get a handy preview area that shows you what the typeface looks like.

2 Pick an attribute (WordPad calls them styles). Some typefaces offer four or more styles, while others give you only two to choose from

3 Set the size. As a rule of thumb, 10 or 12 points is appropriate for body text, while headlines can be as big as Windows will allow you to make them.

4 If you want any special effects attached to the text, like strikeout or underline formatting, this is the place to check. It's also where you can specify a color. (Please, no lime green or fluorescent pink!)

5 Ignore the Script box unless you're using a special keyboard designed to produce foreign characters.

Fig. 16.2

Give your words and letters a little personality by adjusting the formatting of each character. This is how WordPad arranges your Font options.

Q&A: I changed the font formatting, but my document still looks the same. What happened?

If you chose formatting without having any text selected, you won't see the results until you type some new characters. WordPad and many other Windows programs add the formatting information at the insertion point, so it affects whatever you type from that point on. If you want to format text in the existing document, go back and try it again, but this time select the words you want to see changed.

Which fonts do I get with Windows NT?

Windows is incredibly stingy with fonts. When you first install any version of Windows, including Windows NT, you get just a handful of fonts--Arial, Times New Roman, and Courier New (which looks like an old-fashioned typewriter). You also get a couple of useful fonts that include interesting and sometimes strange characters you can use in headlines, or as bullets for the beginning of each item in a list. The Symbol font includes a few boring examples, but the font called WingDings has the best little surprises of all (see Fig. 16.3).

What's TrueType?

Johannes Gutenberg (who invented the printing press) would be amazed if he could see what's happened to type since the days he was carving pieces of wood into letters. For years, Windows has included a bit of technological wizardry called TrueType that lets anyone work with typography in ways that used to be reserved exclusively for professional typesetters.

Why is TrueType important? Because thanks to TrueType, what you see on the screen is really what you get out of the printer. If that doesn't seem like such a big deal, consider the alternative: From Gutenberg's day until as recently as 30 years ago, when you wanted to typeset your company's annual report, you had to pay a printer to pick pieces of hot metal type out of a humongous drawer and arrange them in heavy racks. Every different size, weight, and typeface had its own drawer full of metal.

Now that's a lot of metal, so it's not surprising that most typesetters, even if they had a huge selection of typefaces, only offered a limited selection of sizes. "You want 24 point? Sorry, we have 18 and 36--pick one."

Because TrueType is digital, it gets rid of all that metal and substitutes some mental gymnastics instead. Each typeface is stored in your computer as a set of instructions that Windows uses to draw a letter on the screen. These instructions are completely scalable, so they work at every size from 4 points to 128 points. When you ask for 24 point Times New Roman, Windows first reads the instructions for putting that letter on the screen. Then it gets out its internal calculator and figures out how big to make each line and serif on each letter.

TrueType fonts can scale up to enormous sizes without using up extra space on your hard disk. They can be rotated at any angle, so you can do clever typographic tricks for logos and headlines. And best of all, they work on any printer that works with Windows, so you can be certain that what will pop out of the printer will be the same as what you see on the screen.

You can simply switch to the WingDings font, start typing, and see what you get. But the faster way, as we'll see shortly, is to use the built-in Windows Character Map applet instead.

Fig. 16.3

When you choose the WingDings font and start typing, your letters turn into these strange and interesting symbols instead.

What are those other fonts? And why do they look so ugly at 23 points?

To see all the fonts installed on your system, look in the Fonts folder; open the Control Panel and double-click the Fonts icon. When you open the Fonts folder, you'll see two different types of icons. One has a blue and gray TT for a label. The other has a big red A for an icon.

It's easy to figure out that the ones with TT on the label are TrueType fonts. The other fonts in the Fonts folder are called raster fonts. What's the difference? Let's try blowing up a few letters from each and see what happens.

Yuck. The problem with the raster fonts is that they're not scalable the way TrueType fonts are. Instead, they're specifically designed to look good on the screen at a small number of sizes.

Think of how a photograph works and you'll see the difference. TrueType fonts work like a photographic negative. When you ask Windows to blow up a TrueType font, it goes back to the original, and creates a new image just for that size. All the features are crisp and clear; in fact, just as with a photographic blowup, you can see more detail as the type gets bigger. When you blow up a raster font, though, it's like enlarging a photograph from a newspaper. As it gets larger, you begin seeing the dots instead of the picture.

Fig. 16.4

TrueType fonts (top) keep their nice, smooth edges as they get larger. Raster fonts (bottom) look great at some sizes, but get downright ugly when they're blown up.

Most Windows systems include at least a few raster fonts, including Courier and Symbol (cousins of the similarly named TrueType fonts), MS Sans Serif and MS Serif. These raster fonts are useful because they work quickly and look good on-screen in common sizes. But they won't necessarily look good when they come out of the printer, especially when you use them at sizes other than what they're designed for.

TIP: You can tell Windows that you don't want to see those ugly raster fonts anymore. In the Control Panel, open the Fonts folder and choose View, Options. On the last tab, there's a check box that tells Windows to show you only TrueType fonts.

When you look on the Fonts list of a program, you might also see printer fonts, which have a printer icon next to them. With these fonts you have the opposite problem: They're built into your printer, so when you format text using these typefaces it comes out of your printer looking letter-perfect. But Windows has no way of knowing how to display those fonts on the screen, so it matches the printer font with whatever it thinks is the closest match among the TrueType fonts you're using. If you depend on a set of printer fonts, ask your system administrator or the printer manufacturer how you can get matching TrueType screen fonts.

Font management

The best part about the way Windows works with fonts is that you don't really need to think about them unless you want to. Windows does the work of managing fonts, and whenever you use a Windows program, you automatically have access to all those fonts.

In fact, the only time you need to open the Fonts folder is when you want to add a new font, remove one, or figure out what a certain font looks like.

TIP: The fastest way to open the Fonts folder without using Cascading menus is to pop up the Start menu, open the Run box, type Fonts in the box labeled Open, and then press Enter.

How do I add a new font?

Some Windows programs automatically add new fonts to your system as part of their installation. You can also buy fonts or download them from the Internet and from online services like CompuServe or America Online. To start using a new font (or a bunch of them) in Windows, here's what to do:

1 Open the Control Panel and double-click the Fonts icon to open the Fonts folder.

2 Choose File, Install New Font. You'll see the dialog box shown in Figure 16.5.

Fig. 16.5

When you open the Fonts folder and choose File, Install New Font, you'll see this dialog box.

3 Browse through drives and folders until you find the one that contains the fonts you want to add. If the new fonts came on a floppy disk, for example, select A: here.

4 Select the fonts you want to add from the list of fonts. (If you have a disk full of fonts, save time by clicking the Select All button.)

5 Make sure to check the box labeled Copy fonts to Fonts folder. That way Windows will let you use those fonts next time you need them.

6 Click OK. Your hard drive will whir for a while, and when it's done your new fonts are installed. Now, when you select a font from within any Windows program, you'll see your new fonts.

TIP: There used to be a limit to the number of fonts you could install under Windows. Not with Windows NT. As long as you have room on your hard disk, you can have a thousand fonts or more. Of course, you might have trouble keeping track of them all, but that's a different problem...

I wonder what that font looks like?

OK, so you've installed a few hundred fonts, and now you're working on a new WordPad document. You know the typeface you want is out there, but you can't remember whether it's Algerian or Braggadocio, or Caslon Bold. How can you pick the right one?

Well, if your application offers a preview window like the one in WordPad, it's easy: Just pick the font name in the dialog box and you can see a small sample of the typeface. If your application isn't so considerate, or you want to see a larger preview, try looking at the entire font.

In the Control Panel, open the Fonts folder and double-click the font you're curious about. You'll see a box like the one in Figure 16.6.

You get all sorts of interesting information when you open a font this way:

Who made the font?
What does each letter look like?
How does this font look at different sizes?

Fig. 16.6

Double-click a font icon for a detailed preview of what it looks like at a variety of sizes.

To see what this font looks like on paper, just click the Print button and Windows will send a detailed type sample to your printer.

To close the dialog box and get back to work, click the Done button.

That's almost the right font...

What happens if you know the right font is there, but you can't remember its name? If you can find a font that's close to the one you want, Windows will find other fonts that are similar in characteristics.

To track down a font this way, open the Fonts folder and right-click an empty space in the window. From the popup menu, choose View, List Fonts by Similarity. This looks a little like the Details view you'll see in other folders, but this window's a little different, as Figure 16.7 shows.

To use this view, simply choose the font you want to match in the list box at the top of the window. When you do, Windows will instantly re-sort the fonts in your list, and tell you whether they're very similar, fairly similar, or not similar at all. Double-click the entries at the top of the list to see if you've found the right one.

Fig. 16.7

Can't find that font? If you can find one that's close to what you want, Windows will sort the rest of your fonts by similarity.

I want to use a special character

There's more to life than letters and numbers. If you want to use a WingDings character to insert a Flying Fickle Finger of Fate before every important paragraph in your report, you have two choices.

The hard way is to memorize the secret Windows code for that character. For the finger WingDing, you can simply choose the WingDings font and type a capital F. That's fine if you want to memorize that detail. But you don't need to.

The easy way is to use the Windows Character Map applet. If you installed this program, you'll find it on the Start menu under Programs, Accessories. When you fire it up, you'll see a window like the one in figure 16.8.

TIP: If the Character Map applet isn't available on your menu, you'll have to install it from the original Windows disks. Open Control Panel, choose Add/Remove Programs, and use the Windows NT Setup program to add this accessory.

The Character Map accessory is fairly easy to use.

1 Pick the typeface you want to use from the list box at the top. In this case, we'll choose WingDings.

2 Pick a character from the following list. Can't see those tiny characters? Point to any one of them, click the left mouse button, and hold it down as you slide the pointer across.

3 When you find the character you like, double-click to add it to the Characters to copy box at the top right. Continue adding as many characters as you like.

4 Click the Copy button to copy your selected characters to the Windows Clipboard.

5 Click Close to return to your application, and use the Paste command to insert the characters into your document.

Using fonts the smart way

Design experts have a clever phrase for documents that use too many fonts. The messy result is called ransom-note typography, because these documents look like what kidnappers produce when they chop letters out of a newspaper and paste them on the page.

It's not hard to avoid ransom-note typography. Just follow these simple rules:

Try not to use more than four fonts on a page. If you do, your readers will get confused.
Pick a serif face for headlines and a sans serif face for body type, or vice versa. The contrast helps readers easily see which is which.
Use a simple typeface for body text. Intricate fonts are harder to read, especially at small sizes.
Make sure there's a noticeable difference between different levels of information. If your headlines are 18 point and the subheads are 14 point, readers might not notice the distinction. Try 24 point and 14 point instead.
If you really want to produce a ransom note, look for a Microsoft TrueType font called Ransom, which actually produces the silly look you're usually trying to avoid. It's fun for invitations and notes with friends, although you won't want to use it for a memo to the boss.

I have too many fonts!

Confused by all those fonts? Get rid of some. Deleting a font is as easy as right-clicking and choosing Delete.

CAUTION: It's OK to delete fonts you've added, but don't delete any of the raster fonts that come with your system, like MS Sans Serif and MS Serif. All sorts of programs depend on them. Likewise, don't delete the Times New Roman, Arial, or Courier New TrueType fonts.