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Welcome back to the podcast!
This week’s edition: “A Sign of the Times (New Roman): Exploring the World of Fonts.”
On my commute into the office this morning, I had a striking revelation: we are surrounded by more words than we sometimes realize. This revelation came to me as I slammed on my brakes to avoid striking the Mercedes in front of me; at that point, I was close enough to be able to read its bumper sticker. That just proves that there are so many opportunities to observe this, no matter where you are.
Take a moment right now to examine your own surroundings. How many instances of text do you see? Obviously you see the computer screen right in front of you, but if you can pry your eyes away from this compelling box of light for just a few seconds—no, really, just look away from the computer. I know you can do it. Okay, good. Now—what do you notice? You probably see at least a few examples of text. If you are in an office right now, you might see memos, printed e-mail messages, maybe motivational posters around the office, or even a calendar on the wall. If you drive to work as I do, you probably saw street signs, billboards, advertisements printed on the sides of buses or cars, or even graffiti. If you take public transportation, you no doubt saw some text on advertisements posted inside of the bus, on the walls of the train station, or on magazines and newspapers being sold in the train station concourse.
Now take a closer look at some of that text and observe the different fonts that are being used. The style, color, and even size of the fonts may vary depending on the purpose and message of the text. This is because, in different situations, certain fonts are usually more appropriate than others. For example, when you create a new document in Microsoft Word, you can choose any font that is installed on your computer; but for professional documents, you wouldn’t want to choose a fancy font that’s difficult to read. But there may be other situations where such a font is entirely appropriate, such as in an advertisement where there is not as much text to be read, or on a formal invitation, where flowing calligraphic fonts are often used.
So what happens when you open Word and don’t choose a different font? By default, you’ll get a font called Times New Roman. It’s been the default font for Word in versions 97 through 2003, so it should come as no surprise if you notice it on the majority of documents you’ve dealt with in the past 10 years or so. It’s much older than that, though; Times New Roman was created in 1931 by font designer Stanley Morison after he criticized British newspaper The Times for their current font choice, Times Old Roman. After that, The Times used the new font for 40 years, and its popularity grew. (Read all about the history of Times New Roman here.)
What has kept this font so popular through the years? Well, as I already mentioned, it’s the default font in most versions of Word. Some people might not care enough, or might not even know it’s possible, to change Word’s default font. Other people have just become so familiar with it that they prefer to use it over other fonts. In Word 2007, the new default font is called Calibri—arguably easier to read than Times New Roman, but if you’re one who doesn’t welcome change, you can easily choose a new default.
At this point, you might ask what makes some fonts easier to read than others. It might help here to know a bit of French and Dutch. Calibri falls into a category of fonts known as sans-serif fonts; “sans” coming from the French word for “without” and “serif” coming from the Dutch noun “schreef,” which translates to something like “stroke of the pen.” This category of fonts lacks the ornamental details that appear on some characters in a serif font such as Times New Roman. You’ll see these if you look at the bottom of a lowercase “n.” In a serif font such as Times New Roman or Georgia, this character will have little “feet” that do not appear on sans-serif fonts such as Calibri, Verdana, or Arial.
In Word 2007, you can easily test this out with a new feature called Live Preview. Type some text in a document, select it, and then click the Font drop-down list on the Home tab of the Ribbon. As you hover your mouse over different fonts, you can preview how your text will look in that font without actually committing to the change.
Anyway, some people argue that these “feet” in serif fonts help move your eyes along the text, making it easier to read; other people say the serifs can be distracting. Some say “po-TAY-to,” while still others say “po-TAH-to.” And around and around we go.
The bottom line is this: you should strive to find a font that suits your text. For large blocks of text, such as a formal document, you will want to avoid any fonts that are too fancy, flowy, or curly (or Moe, or Larry, or even Shemp, for that matter). While we’re on the point, try to stick with a color that is easily readable. Black text on a white background is always a safe bet. Blue text on a pink background? Your readers might go into seizures before the end of the first paragraph.
But that’s not to say that you should always stick with the defaults, either. There is a wide world of font formatting options and text effects available in Word that you can use to help your text stand out, and these are particularly useful for heading styles. If used in moderation, you should be able to create some eye-catching text that maintains professionalism. The tips in this week’s blog entry will show you where to find these options and how to apply them to your fonts. You can get the links for these tips at www.productiveUpodcast.com.
The tips for this week are:
- Strike Out – exploring the text effects available in Word
- Fix Your Fonts – adjusting the character spacing for text
- The Space Between – adjusting the font kerning
- Start Fresh – clear the formatting from selected text
- Making Normal Your Own – changing Word’s defaults for font, paragraph, and page setup styles (Word 2003 and earlier, Word 2007)
- Using Live Preview with Fonts in Word 2007
- Installing Fonts in Windows
For all you Mac users out there, we haven’t forgotten about you! Here are a couple of tips you can use for managing your fonts:
That’s all for this week. As always, if you found these tips useful or have some questions you would like to see covered in a future episode, you can leave us a quick note on Twitter by following @productiveUcast. Or, if you want to spread the love, write a review of the podcast on iTunes.
Until next time, remember: actions may speak louder than words, but when words are all you have, be sure to make them look good!
Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum
[...] A Sign of the Times (New Roman): Exploring the World of Fonts (VOL030) (August 29, 2009). In Productive U Podcast. Retrieved January 17, 2010. [...]