Since beginning my career as a writer, I’ve had this on-going love-hate relationship with my computer. It’s wonderful to be able to correct a word, rearrange sentences and paragraphs, and insert new thoughts without having to retype entire pages, or chapters! And a thumb drive is much more portable than a manuscript when it comes to taking my work on the road. On the other hand, it can be downright maddening when inexplicable glitches intrude on my train of thought and I have to figure out why I’m suddenly typing in italics — or why the spacing between lines expanded, or why the computer insists on changing “tempus fugit” to “tempt us fugitives” — when I want to be working on how to get Sweet Sue off those railroad tracks.
I’ve decided to send out a periodic newsletter to interested followers in which I discuss the various computer-related problems I’ve run across and how to overcome them. The newsletter is intended for writers who are not computer geeks and have no desire to join that club. They really are interested in knowing only what’s needed to get the job done. Each issue will cover a single topic and will feature down-to-earth explanations about some of those computer mysteries that pop up at the most inconvenient time.
The first newsletter appears below for all visitors to my website. My plan for future newsletters is to publish on a quarterly basis and distribute only to those who sign up. So if you like what you see here, use the easy sign up space in the sidebar. Ideas for future articles include:
- Learn the do’s and don’ts for using hyphen, N-dashes and M-dashes. Once you know the secret, it’s easy.
- Lean in and learn how to use Word intelligently — ditch all those spaces and tabs.
- Styles — what every beginner should know
- HTML — what’s it all about, Alfie? (Good to know if you intend to publish an online edition of your book.)
Note: If your viewing window is too narrow to show the sidebar with the signup form on the righthand side, look for it at the bottom of the page.
The Software Side of Writing
Volume 1, Issue 1
Font Follies
If you’re like me, you’re a member of a small group of writers who meet regularly and critique one another’s work. In addition, we often need to exchange documents with reviewers, agents, beta readers, publishers, friends, relatives and the world at large. Sound Familiar? One of the mysterious and pesky issues that can plague these document exchanges occurs when receiver either can’t open the document or, doesn’t see the document as originally sent.
- Italics and boldface might appear as plain text
- Accented characters might lose their accents or appear as different characters altogether
- Underlining might disappear
This can be particularly annoying if it happens in a cover letter or (horrors!) a manuscript you’ve sent to an editor, agent or publisher to evaluate. You’ve been careful to give the impression that you’re a professional writer but now, unbeknownst to you, your submittal comes off looking amateurish! Your “résumé” just became a “resume.”
So, what’s up?
It’s not surprising that such glitches could happen if the word processing software used by the group varied widely among members and you might assume that explains why it was happening in my critique group. Oh contraire—my group long ago agreed we’d use Microsoft Word for all of our shared documents. Nevertheless, we still occasionally run up against these computer-generated road blocks. What’s going on? I decided to do a little investigating—in other words, I asked my hubby, Dan, to explain:
Take it away Dan:
MS-Word comes with a bewildering array of fonts. A quick check on my own PC reveals 309 named fonts, each of which has multiple styles, weights, sizes, and effects. (Bold, Italics, Underline, Strikethrough, Small caps, Super/Subscript, …, the list goes on and on.) And when you download an upgrade, an add-on, or install another Office product you get even more. Strictly speaking, each of the variants (size, weight, …) is a separate font. The named fonts in Word are actually typefaces or font families, but I’ll stick to the Microsoft terminology. That is: the named items you see when you scroll through the list in Word’s [Font:] dialog box (Arial, Calibri, Garamond, etc.) are what I’ll call “fonts.” Agreed?
Because of the plethora of available choices, it is easily possible that the font you choose for a particular document is one that some of your potential readers may not have on their computer. This is particularly true if one of you uses a PC while the other uses a Mac. (Apple and Windows versions of Word share a number of common fonts but also have lots of different fonts that are unique to their own platforms.)
When Word on the receiving system opens such a document and detects that the origination font isn’t installed locally, it selects one of its available fonts in place of the missing original. It tries to use one that has characteristics similar to the original. It often succeeds admirably and the reader is not even aware that the switch has occurred. Occasionally, however, the chosen substitute font is missing one or more features of the origina
l font and anomalies pop up. Word gives no indication that the switcheroo has occurred so if your “résumé” becomes a “resume”, the reader will likely assume you didn’t know the difference and toss it in the reject pile.
There are a number of ways you can avoid the problem. Here are some:
- Pick a font you know your recipients will have. That means sticking with any of several fonts that are included with all versions of Word on all platforms. I recommend Arial for a san serif font and Times New Roman for a serif font. [Judy: Serif? San serif? Dan: See Serifs sidebar.] Both support extensive “styles” and foreign characters so you know that your italics, boldface, and accented characters will be faithfully reproduced. Both are TrueType fonts so you can use virtually any font size (12-point too big and 11-point too small for you? Fine, use 11½. Hey, I’m joking—but you could do it.) This solution assumes you’ve already determined that MS-Word format is acceptable to those in your distribution list. If not, see the last solution.
- Embed your chosen font in the document. (In this context, a “font” is a file that contains instructions on how to form all the characters comprising the font, thus enabling the receiver to not only see the document as you intended but to make suggestions, comments or revisions that might include characters not present in your original.) If you use the Windows Operating System, you have the option of embedding your font in the document itself, thus ensuring that it will be available t
o the receiving system. Sadly, if you’re creating the document using Word for Mac, this option isn’t available (however, Mac systems can receive and make use of embedded fonts from a Windows PC). Here is a link to the Microsoft web page explaining how to embed fonts in a Word document. Be aware that doing this increases the document’s file size, often significantly. - Convert the document to PDF format. [Judy: Yikes! What’s a PDF format? Dan: See PDF sidebar.] This ensures that the receiver will see the document exactly as you’ve composed it. The downside is that it severely complicates and/or limits the kind of editing the receiver can do. Therefore, it’s a less than ideal solution for exchanging documents with editors, reviewers, beta-readers or within a critique group.
