How-To
Typography
(pt. 3)

How-To

Typography and Issues with Type
(Part Three)

Drop Caps

>> In some circumstances for emphasis I’d like to use a double height drop cap occupying two lines, with the third line running as usual. I can’t quite seem top achieve this using the various drop cap settings in the paragraph styles box. Anyone got an idiot’s guide to using drop caps? <<

You can adjust the paragraph style to give you a drop cap or do this another way, through a text frame. The paragraph style drop caps aren’t satisfactory if you want a really good drop cap, but it works okay sometimes and is easy. The text frame method gives more control, but there are things you need to keep in mind with it, too.

First – alignment is crucial if you want a non-amateurish drop cap. As a rule, the top of the drop cap should line up with the top of the ascenders in the first line of type and the bottom of the drop cap should line up with the baseline of the last line of type; the left edge of the drop cap should line up with the left margin of the paragraph. The lines of text to the right of the drop cap should follow its contours; you don’t want a big white gap between parts of the drop cap and the text. These are just rough guidelines. Ultimately, you need to be guided by your sense of what looks good – as long as you have a good visual sense and can tell an effective drop cap from a poor attempt to show off what your software can do. A drop cap just sort of floating out there with no discernible relationship to the rest of the paragraph says “unprofessional.”

If you want to use the paragraph style drop cap, you can run a macro (DROPCAP.WMC) that will put a drop cap in the current paragraph. Unfortunately, it uses the boldface of the paragraph’s font and will need to be worked on. But it will get you started. You can adjust the drop cap by modifying the paragraph style at the Effects screen.

You said you wanted a two-line drop cap and you were using 10-on 12-pt. type. When you tell WSWin to put in a drop cap by modifying the style, it will start with 20 on 14.6. Click on OK and see how it looks. With Times New Roman, this drop cap was not tall enough; the base of my test drop cap (a capital P) aligned with the top of the x-height of the text in the second line. So I right-clicked on Modify Paragraph Style again and adjusted the drop cap settings. I changed the size to 24 points and the line height automatically changed to 17.5. Clicked OK. Still not good. Modified again -changed the size to 26 points and the line height changed to 18.9. Clicked OK. Looks pretty good, a bit too long. Modified again – changed the size to 25.5 and the line height changed to 18.6. Now it looks aligned to me, on screen anyway. Once you find the right setting for the font you’re using, I suggest you create a new paragraph style using those settings and call it Drop Cap. Then you can use it throughout your document and won’t have to fuss again.

Note the procedure I use: adjust ONLY the size and let WSWin put in the line height. I never, ever use autoleading in a paragraph style, but I do let WSWin put in line height when I’m making a drop cap. If you do this, your text will not get thrown off the leading grid (see here) and the baselines of type will be even from one line to the next. Change the size, then tab to Line Height, which will be automatically adjusted, then click OK. Generally, avoid Adjust Baseline because it *will* throw off the line spacing. Align Nearest Baseline will throw off the line spacing, too. I find it best to work with Align Top of Character and just keep adjusting the type size until the drop cap is aligned with the baseline of the second, third, or whatever line of type.

For some typefaces and some characters, the paragraph method will produce an okay drop cap. For others, it makes really bad drop caps no matter what you do. Often the left of the drop cap will be too far inside the left margin of the text. This is due to the bounding box of the character, which begins at the margin. Also, the paragraph style method produces drop caps that start just a bit too low in relation to the ascenders of the line of text. Then there is the issue of no contouring around the drop cap. For an H or an M, that’s not a problem, but for an A or an L, it is.

The best thing is to experiment and see what you get when you do this or that.

How many lines deep should your drop cap be? In general, I don’t much care for a 2-line drop cap because it’s too wimpy. If you are using drop caps as a design element to emphasize the start of the article or major sections of the article, why not make them big and beautiful? However, if you are using drop caps to indicate transitions in the text, a 2-line drop cap might be appropriate. I will confess to using 2-line drop caps once in a while.

How I Like to Make Drop Caps

My preferred method of making a drop cap is to use a text frame. I make the frame transparent with no wraparound and I make it BIG to start. Then I type in the letter and keep adjusting the size of the drop cap until it fits nicely so that the top of the drop cap aligns with the top of the first line’s ascenders and the bottom of the drop cap aligns with the baseline of the last line of text. I also adjust the left position of the drop cap so it is exactly where I want it in relation to the left text margin. I make the frame just large enough to hold the drop cap when I’ve finished doing the sizing.

I do not agree with this method:
>> Prepare your text normally. Where you want the cap, space a few bars into it to make room. Grab the cap in the frame with the graphics tool and plop it where you want. <<

You might get the text where you want it past the drop cap in the first line. However, you will not be able to get the second line to move away from the margin and the drop cap merely by typing in spaces. Also, adding spaces does not give you enough control over the exact placement of the text next to the drop cap. What I prefer to do is a contoured wraparound. Some people think you can’t do this in WSWin, but actually you can, and quite easily. I like to do it this way:

Imake the text frame holding the drop cap transparent with no wraparound. When I have the drop cap in the frame exactly where and how I want it, I add another transparent text frame with no wraparound that is considerably larger than the drop cap frame and do not type any text into it. Now I put transparent text frames WITH WRAPAROUND within that new text frame. I make absolutely certain that those text frames are child frames of the larger text frame (not the drop cap frame). I usually snap the second large text frame to the grid (my text always is designed to fit a leading grid) and have Snap to Grid selected when I add the small wraparound text frames. I draw one and then I duplicate it by holding down Control as I drag the small frame down to the next position on the grid. Once I have all necessary small text frames with nothing in them in place within the large text frame, I select the large text frame and Send to Back. Now the drop cap, temporarily pushed aside by the empty small text frames, will reappear, but the paragraph text will be pushed aside by the small text frames sent to back. I then grab the right edge of each little child frame and adjust the right edge to give a nice contour with each line of type.

The reason for putting the little empty text frames with wraparound within a larger text frame with no wraparound and no text – all transparent, by the way – is that if I move the drop cap, I can move the whole wraparound outline by selecting the larger text frame instead of two, three, four or more little text frames. See page for more on contoured wraparounds.

I’m not sure any of this is clear. It is so automatic for me that I have a hard time describing exactly what I’m doing. It sounds much more complicated than it is to do it. The Snap To feature of WSWin is very powerful and very useful and you need to be familiar with how to use it and what option to select for different purposes.

Turning Off Automatic Font Mapping in WSWin

The default way WSWin deals with fonts is brain-dead. For example, if you have enough fonts on your system that you don’t keep them all installed all the time, you may not have a font that you used when you set up the document loaded the next time you open it. WSWin will “help” you by automatically substituting a font you do have installed. In Windows 3.1, that font is usually Arial. It might be whatever font appears first on the list of installed fonts for Windows.

I detest and despise the default way WSWin substitutes fonts. It doesn’t ask you, it just goes ahead and puts a different font in your paragraph styles and doesn’t even tell you what font you used in the document. Horrible!!

BUT – you can fix WSWin so it doesn’t do this. Here’s how:

Open up the WSW.INI file in the Windows directory. Find the section that starts with [Preferences]

There are many lines of explanation, each preceded by a semicolon (which makes them inactive). Find this line NOT preceded by a semicolon:

FontMapping=0

Yours will probably say FontMapping=1, which is the default. Change it to FontMapping=0. If you can’t find a line like this anywhere in the [Preferences] section, put FontMapping=0 in there. The line in my WSW.INI file follows CharacterStyle=1 and precedes AutoBackup=1.

When you have FontMapping=0, instead of substituting some font or other for one that you don’t currently have installed, WSWin will use a screen font (you’ll see your text just fine), which will look peculiar. Put your text cursor in a paragraph with the screen font. There will be a blank space in the font name listing of the Style Bar. Now do a Modify Paragraph Style. You will see the name of the font you used when you created the document in the Character screen!! Exactly what you need to know. So you go to your font manager program or whatever you use to make fonts active in Windows and install the missing font(s). Now go back to your WSWin document and reinstall the desired printer driver. You must do the full printer driver installation as I described above (getting to the actual printer Setup screen, not just clicking OK at the first Print Setup screen). Your screen fonts WSWin used for the missing fonts will now be replaced by the actual fonts.

Once you turn off automatic font mapping, you’ll never have to wonder what font you used where in your document because the paragraph styles will retain that information. Then it’s just a matter of installing whatever fonts are missing, fully installing the printer driver in WSWin, and you’re all set.

Making Fractions in WSWin

Typewriters and computer keyboards do not come with fraction characters, so the normal typing practice is to use something like 1/2 to indicate . The Windows ANSI character set includes three fractions at Alt+0188 (), Alt+0189 (), and Alt+0190 (). This is a very limited offering of fractions, however, and forces a user to resort to 1/3 and so forth for the unavailable fractions. Nevertheless, quality typesetting demands the use of true slash fractions. Some have suggested approximating a slash fraction by using a superscript, virgule slash, and subscript, thus: . Unfortunately, making a slash fraction with super- and subscripts does not produce satisfactory results. A proper (i.e., designed) slash fraction uses a fraction slash, properly called a solidus, and the denominator sits on the baseline. The fraction slash is an unencoded character in the Windows ANSI character set and you can’t get at it through the keyboard or any Alt+ combination. So that’s the first problem. The virgule is not a substitute for the fraction slash. For those who don’t know, the virgule is the proper name for the slash that appears on the keyboard under the question mark.

The virgule is much steeper than the fraction slash. This will be obvious if you type a superscript 1 followed by a virgule slash and then a subscript 2. Next to it type Alt+0189, the code for the designed in the font. Compare the slashes. Nobody could miss the difference – it’s not at all subtle. The length of the virgule is also wrong for a fraction.

Denominator Baseline Position

By default a WSWin subscript is positioned 25% under the baseline. But a fraction denominator needs to sit on the baseline. You can’t adjust this position from within WSWin, unfortunately, but you can do it by editing WSW.INI. To put subscripts on the baseline rather than below it, you could add this line under the [Preferences] section: SubRollPercent=0

That would make it possible for the denominators of “manufactured” fractions to sit on the baseline. Unfortunately, it would also affect every other subscript in every other WSWin document, where you presumably would want at least some of them to be positioned below the baseline. The only way around this would be to edit WSW.INI every time you wanted to manufacture fractions for a document and change it when you wanted subscripts in the usual place (not difficult – just put a semicolon in front of the SubRollPercent line to return to default). The position of subscripts depends on the setting in WSW.INI when you are printing the document.

Weight of Super- and Subscripts

The numbers aren’t the right weight. If you type the real in the font (Alt+0189) and type a superscripted 1 next to it, you’ll see that the superscript is lighter and thinner than the 1 in the designed fraction contained in the font. This is even more obvious when you *print* a real fraction next to a manufactured fraction. It’s the same problem you get when you make small caps by reducing the font size. The weight is wrong as compared with small caps designed for the font.

The Ideal Solution: An Expert Set

If you need more fractions than the , , and that are contained in the font (at Alt+0188, Alt+0189, Alt+0190), you should buy an Expert Set to go with the font you are using. Not all fonts come with Expert Sets, so you might decide to use a certain font for which an Expert Set is available when you will be using more than the three included fractions. Unfortunately, there aren’t many expert sets available in TrueType; most are in Type 1 format only. It’s very easy to use Type 1 fonts on any printer, however. All you need is Adobe Type Manager, which works seamlessly with Windows and is now available for Windows NT also. Expert Sets contain all the x/3 fractions and x/8 fractions and have a full set of designed subscript and superscript numbers of the proper weight, and the fraction slash is available from the keyboard in place of the virgule.

Another Solution: Use a Font Editor

I have some expert sets, but not all fonts come with them. What I do for those fonts is create a pseudo-expert set with a font editor (I use FontMonger, no longer available; Fontographer is a current product and there are others). I open a copy of the base font and fish out the unencoded fi and fl ligatures and put them at the W and X places on the keyboard (their default position in an Adobe font); I replace the virgule with the unencoded fraction slash, replace the i with the unencoded dotless i, and reduce the width of the em dash to 75%, giving me a three-fourths em dash, which I put at the = position (the default). I create and by disassembling the font’s and fractions. I keep the slash from the designed fraction, use the 1 from the designed fraction for my new and the 3 from the as the denominator for my new . For I substitute the 2 from the designed for the numerator of my new . This way the weights are all proper and the slashes match exactly. I usually make a the same way, except there is no 8 available so I have to reduce the size of that character. This makes the weight wrong, but it’s not very noticeable when the 1 and the slash are from the designed fractions in the font. If I need fractions beyond the , , , , , and , I use a font that comes with an Expert Set.

In the interest of good typesetting, I ask, beg, implore you not to try making bastard fractions using superscripts, subscripts, and a virgule! It would be better to be honest about it and just stick with a 2/3 written just that way.

Making True Fractions in WSWin

I just realized something today that can give you better manufactured slash fractions than it seemed we could get with WSWin and no Expert Set. This won’t do for fine typography, but for most office-type work it’s probably “good enough.”

The TrueType Symbol font, which comes with Windows and is installed automatically, contains a true fraction slash. It’s at Alt+0164. Open your Character Map and take a look.

You can make a pretty good slash fraction this way: Modify your BodyText paragraph style, Options screen, Super/Subscript, Reduce Font Size. Set it at 40%. Now, to make a slash fraction, type (for example) 1+Alt0164+3. Don’t use the plus signs, just type 1Alt+01643. Type a space. Select the middle character (Alt+0164) and change it to the Symbol TrueType font. It will now change to a true fraction slash. Now select just the first character (here it’s 1) and superscript it. Put your cursor at the immediate left of the first character and notice the point size in the Style Bar under the toolbar. Now select just the third character (here it’s 3) and change its point size to match the superscripted character. You can do that either by right-clicking on the highlighted number and selecting Character from the popup menu, or by doing Style menu, Size. You should now have a decent-looking fraction slash whose denominator sits on the baseline, where it belongs!!!

To fine-tune this, I suggest making a practice by this method and comparing it with the designed . which you can get by typing Alt+0189. ( ) Notice whether the 1 in the designed fraction is about the same size as your superscripted 1. If your superscripted 1 is too small or too large, modify your paragraph style again and make the Super/Subscript font reduction match the true designed fraction. Once you get the super/subscript reduction setting right, you will know what size to make your denominator.

By NOT subscripting the denominator, you will leave the number on the baseline instead of below it. And you won’t need to edit WSW.INI, which is a pain and changes all subscripts in all your documents as long as that version of WSW.INI is in effect.

These fractions will still suffer from being too light in weight compared with a designed fraction, but they’re pretty close. Most people would never notice (unfortunately<g>).

On the plus side, you do get a decent fraction with a true fraction slash and the denominator on the baseline and you don’t need to buy any fonts or any font editor. You already have the Symbol TrueType font – be sure it’s installed and active if you want to use this method. You don’t need a special font for the numerator and denominator.

I’m not used to using the Symbol font for fractions, but it’s very handy for some of the special characters it contains, such as the fraction slash ( ). Other very useful characters in Symbol are the prime ( ' ) and double prime ( " ). These are better for making inch marks or feet marks than that dreadful typewriter apostrophe and ditto mark on the keyboard.

For fine typesetting, you should use an expert set or fractions formed in a font editor as I described in another message. But for day-to-day stuff, the method I just described will provide a better solution than typing 1/3 in full size with the virgule or subscripting the denominator.

Slash Fraction Macro

Those of us wanting an easy way to make a decent slash fraction with WSWin-

I came up with a macro that does as good a job as we can get, will work regardless of what text font we are using, puts the numerator and the denominator in the same font size, works for any number combination that has one character in the numerator and one character in the denominator, uses the true fraction slash, and has the denominator sitting on the baseline where it belongs.

This macro uses Character Styles to get these results. What this means is that WSWin applies a paragraph style to selected text. In order to use this macro you need to check your Edit menu, Preferences, Procedures, and be sure that the button for Applying Paragraph Styles to Selected Text Should Affect: is next to Selected Text Only. I’ve stated many times on this list that you SHOULD have your WSWin Preferences set up this way. You will gain major functionality if you have this preference set instead of the other choice (which unfortunately is the default – lots of WSWin defaults are brain dead).

Copy the macro below to the Windows clipboard, start the WSWin Macro Editor, and Paste the copied text into it. Change the path in the macro text to match your own WSWin\MACROS directory and Save As Fraction.WMC in that directory. Now you should be ready to run the macro.

How to Use the Macro

To use this macro you will have to set up a paragraph style called Fraction. Do this by having your text cursor in an unmodified paragraph in your BodyText style or whatever you are using for your document’s main text. Now do a Modify Paragraph Style. You should get a screen in which the bullet in Modify: is next to Paragraph Style, not Current Paragraph. First check the Options screen and make sure you have Super/Supscript Reduce Font Size set at 40%. The default is 50%, which is usually too small for anything, much less a numerator. If you have it at 40% that means your super- and subscripts will be at 60% of the normal font size (e.g., if you’re using 12 point type the super/subscripts will be in 7.2 point type). Be sure that if you have any related BodyText styles in which you use super/subscripts you change them all to 40%. Now, in the Modify BodyText screen, click on the Create... button. For the Style Name use Fraction and click OK. Click OK again without making changes to your new Fraction style. Now you need to find out what point size to make text in your Fraction style. To do this type a number in your BodyText style (or whatever style you based Fraction on) and superscript it. Put your text cursor to the immediate left of the superscripted number and notice the size of the superscript in the Style Bar right below the icons at the top of the screen. (If the reduced size doesn’t show up, move your cursor left one character and then back to the immediate left of the superscript; now the reduced size should be in the Style Bar box.) Write it down if you are memory-challenged. Now do a Modify Paragraph Style and scroll through the styles to bring up Fraction. In the Character screen, at Size type in the point size of the superscript you just noted. You don’t need to do anything with the Line Ht. setting, which will change to the autoleading value. Now click OK. What you want is for your point size in the Fraction style to match the point size of a superscript in BodyText style, or whatever you based your Fraction style on (the font you use for your text).

At this point you should have Character Styles as your method of applying styles to selected text, should have your super/subscript setting at 40%, and should have a Fraction paragraph style that matches your normal BodyText except for being 40% smaller. You also must have the Symbol TrueType font installed and no other Symbol font. You are now ready to try out the macro.

Type a fraction the way you normally would, such as 1/3, 3/4, 1/2 – the number, the keyboard slash, the number. Do not put in a space. With your text cursor to the immediate right of the second number, run the Fraction macro. You should get a nice fraction and your cursor will wind up at the immediate right of the fraction and back in your main body text style so you are ready to continue working. This macro is intended to be used *while you are writing*, but can also be used later. You can use it later if you put your cursor to the immediate right of the second number of your fraction characters before you run the macro. If you find it easier to write fractions as 1/3, for example, when you are writing, you could do a Find later and look for 1/3, put your cursor to the right of the 1/3, run the macro, and continue your Find. It’s very easy to assign this macro to a keystroke and nothing at all to type your fraction and then the macro keystroke, so there really isn’t any reason to do a search later for your fractions. Run the macro right after you type a fraction. You can type your text this way: 11/3 (for one and one-third), run the macro, and just the will be turned into a fraction. Much better than doing it this way: 1-1/3, where you would need to delete the hyphen. I assigned the macro to ^/, which was used for nothing in the WordStar keystroke set and was used for Context Help in the standard Windows keystroke set (also accessible by Shift-F1).

One other suggestion – Edit your WSW.INI file by putting this line in the [Preferences] section:

SuperRollPercent=37

This will put your superscripts FOR ALL DOCUMENTS somewhat lower than the 40% default setting. This will give you a more nicely positioned numerator and will not make your other superscripts look odd. If you want to return to the default superscript position, put a semicolon in front of that line and it will be inactivated and the default will take over. If you’re nervous about editing WSW.INI, make a backup copy first. Then you can easily restore if you mess something up.

Try this macro and see what you think. I’ve used it again and again and it always works. For reasons I’ve already gone into (especially weight) the fractions are not as nice as designed fractions built into the font (, , ) or from an Expert Set. But the macro is fast and easy and gives you as nice a fraction as you can get without having an actual designed fraction.

By the way, if you want to use fractions that have 2 characters in the denominator (, , etc.), you could either come up with another macro based on this one – easiest by editing the macro in Macro Editor and Saving As fractn2.wmc – or you could switch to Draft Editor after you’ve run this macro and with your tags turned on, type your 2-number denominator within the Fraction font tags. Then edit out the superfluous character. In order for this to work, you would need to put your cursor after the first number in the denominator, run the Fraction macro, switch to Draft Editor, type the second number within the Fraction style tags, delete the extra character, and continue either in Draft Editor or Page Editor view.

One more thing: if you change the point size of your BodyText styles, you will need to superscript a number in the changed point size to see what size a superscript is now. Then you will need to Modify Paragraph Style for your Fraction style so that the point size of the Fraction style is the same as the superscripted point size in BodyText. The macro itself works with any font and point size and depends on YOU to get the right point size in your Fraction paragraph style.

If you intend to use this macro, you should create a Fraction paragraph style in any templates you use for documents where you might be including fractions. I’ve already added a Fraction style to my Default.WST template. This macro REQUIRES a Fraction paragraph style in a document in order to work. It also requires that the Edit menu, Preferences, Procedures is set up as I described above.

==============================================

   REM Description: Creates a slash fraction

   ' WSWin Macro File: D:\WSWin\MACROS\FRACTION.WMC

   REM Change the above path to match your own

   REM WSWin\MACROS directory

   CharLeft 2, 0,

   CharRight 1, 1,

   TypeText "$"

   CharLeft 1, 1,

   StyleApplyFont "Symbol"

   CharLeft 2, 0,

   CharRight 1, 1,

   StyleSuperSub 1

   CharRight 3, 0,

   TypeText " "

   CharLeft 1, 0,

   CharLeft 1, 1,

   StyleApplyStyle "Fraction",

   CharRight 2, 0,

   EditDelete 3, 1

==============================================

Why Text Reflows Happen

All fonts come with metrics and when any Windows application positions the characters of a TrueType font, it makes small adjustments in the font metrics according to the resolution of the printer selected for the document (or for your Windows default printer).

Theoretically, this is a good idea because it should make your printed output look better. Obviously, the same TrueType character will be slightly thicker or thinner if it’s printed on a 120-dpi dot matrix printer as compared with a 1200-dpi laser printer. This adjustment for printer resolution would be great, were it not for the fact that we sometimes want to print the same document on printers with different resolutions. When you change the printer driver, all the character positions are recalculated, and the result is often that the document reflows. This is at best a PITA, at worst a disaster if you print first and look later.

Your document onscreen should match your printed document, however. That’s the idea of WYSIWYG. When you switch printer drivers, the onscreen display will change if it’s going to cause the document to reflow. However, screen displays don’t always get updated properly. You should force a complete screen update by switching into Draft Editor and right back into WYSIWYG Page Editor.

All bets are off if you’re using fonts built into your printer. Screen displays are frequently wrong for printer-resident fonts. Remember that “Times Roman” is not the same as Times New Roman TrueType. Complicating things is that a font can be aliased in Windows. What happens in this case is that when you use Times New Roman, for example, your printer’s Times Roman can be substituted at print time. Theoretically, the metrics should be the same. Theoretically.<g> I never did get straight exactly what gets substituted for what (listed in Win.Ini in Windows 3.1), but I know that if you’re printing to a PostScript printer and you are using TrueType Times New Roman, you get the printer-resident Times Roman; if you’re using Arial onscreen, you get printer-resident Helvetica when you print. There are several variations of this kind of substitution possible.

This has nothing to do with kerning. Kerning is adjustment of spacing between letters. You see it (sort of) onscreen; you don’t get a surprise at print time. It’s just the way Windows deals with fonts.

Division Sign Character Position

>> And where would I find the divide-by sign made up of a combined dash and colon (dash with dot over and under)? <<

Fonts with a full standard extended character set have the division sign at Alt+0247.

If it’s missing in a font you are using, that means that your font doesn’t have the standard extended character set. Usually the reasons are either that it’s a decorative or display font or a cheap TrueType font, often shareware.

Those Bushel O’ Fonts TrueType collections (10,000 fonts for $10 <g>) often do not include a full character set and will not have accented characters and many other characters that do not appear on the keyboard.

Another place you can always find the division sign, along with many other useful characters such as the true prime for feet ( ’ ) and double-prime ( " ) for inches is the Symbol font. The division sign ( ÷ ) is Alt+0184 in the Symbol font. Scaleable TrueType Symbol comes with Windows.

Making a Chart for a Font’s Entire Character Set

Set up a Windows spreadsheet or WSWin table to give you 16 rows down and 32 columns across. This will give you positions for 256 characters. In every other column, type the numeric locations of the character set. Windows can’t print anything below 032 so you could leave those out, which would give you four fewer columns. Alt+032 is the location for the space character. So in your first column type numbers from 33 to 48 consecutively in each cell. In the second column, hold down Alt and type the actual character – Alt+033 will give you !, Alt+034 will give you “, and so forth. Be sure the character cells line up properly with the corresponding numbered cells. In the third column type numbers from 49 to 64. In the fourth column type the corresponding characters by again doing Alt+049 (gives you 1) and so forth. Continue with the numbered columns and the corresponding column with the actual characters (Alt+0+the number) until you get to 255 (there’s nothing at 256). Be sure to use a font with the full Windows character set, such as Times New Roman or Arial. Save your table as Fontmap or something similar.

If you want to find out what’s at those locations for any typeface, highlight the column with the actual Alt+number and change the font to what you want. You can now see what’s at those locations for any font you select. Be sure you use Alt+0+the number in the columns next to the numbered cells.

You’ll note that there aren’t printable characters at all locations between 1 and 255. In a full character set, you can’t print anything below 32 in Windows and you can’t print anything at 127, 128, 129, 141, 142, 143, 144, 157, 158. Some of those locations appear to be empty and others might be used for some internal things I don’t know about. I’ve tried to remap characters in some of those locations using a font editor and it didn’t work. The remapped characters wouldn’t print. Some fonts don’t have a full character set and they may fill up some of the standard locations with bullets or boxes, which may or may not print. If you want the standard font bullet you should hit Alt+0149, even if Character Map shows bullets at some other locations.

Points in Computer Type

>> A point is closer to ". For many non-critical purposes, " will do. 6 lines per inch would be about 12 points; 8 lines per inch about 9 points, etc. <<

Before the days of computers, PostScript, and desktop publishing, a point in the Anglo-American typesetting system was equal to .0138 inch. An Anglo-American point was always one-twelfth of a pica, and a pica equaled .166 inch. This is the traditional printer’s pica. There were other typesetting systems used in Continental Europe that had slightly different measurements for a point.

However, when computers came along the PostScript and later the TrueType pica was standardized to exactly of an inch and thus a PostScript point is exactly 1 of an inch. So " is not a “noncritical” measurement, it’s an exact measurement for computer typesetting systems.

Most of the old-time typesetters are out of business and the PostScript point rules the world. This is interesting when you consider that most of the world runs on the metric system, not inches. Adobe, a US company, made the rules at the dawn of the new era and I guess the rest of the world was just out of luck.

If you set your line spacing measurement to 12 points or 1 pica, you’ll get six lines to the inch.

The PostScript point was standardized at " and the PostScript pica is exactly ". TrueType also uses the " pica.

You are correct that the printer’s point pre-PostScript was .01383 inch (which was rounded, being of the printer’s pica of .166 inch). Continental Europe used a larger point, the Didot point, which was of a cicero; the Didot point measured .01483 inch, the cicero was .178 inch, and we are again dealing with rounding. The rest of the world doesn’t use inches.

>> I would consider material set 10 on 12 to have two points of leading. <<

This was a reasonable and standard way to express it in the days of metal typesetting, but this usage has fallen by the wayside in computer typesetting. I checked several sources and they all agreed that leading refers to the distance between baselines.

First, Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style (which is revered by professionals in typography): “Lead [Rhyming with red] – Originally a strip of soft metal (lead or brass) used for vertical spacing between lines of type. Now meaning the vertical distance from the baseline of one line to the baseline of the next. Also called leading.”

Adobe PageMaker user manual: “Leading is the vertical space between lines of text...Leading settings have two parts: the amount of leading, which measures the entire vertical space allotted for a line of text (the slug), and the leading method, which defines where the text is positioned in the slug.” Ordinarily, information in a computer manual is likely to be a joke, but this is from Adobe, which calls the shots in this area.

Robin Williams, The PC is not a typewriter (the standard popular introduction for beginners): “10 point type on 2 points of linespace (a piece of lead 2 points thick) makes 12 point leading.” She also follows today’s standard practice of using linespacing and leading as equivalent terms ("linespacing, or leading [the space between the lines of type]").

Mark Beach in Graphically Speaking: An Illustrated Guide to the Working Language of Design and Printing: “Leading – Space between lines of type expressed as the distance between baselines.”

I could give several more in the same vein.

Standards do not fall down from heaven. They evolve as circumstances change. Because computer typesetting allows for negative leading (as in 36/30 – 36 point type on 30 point line spacing or leading), terminology has to take that into account. The standard today is to call the baseline-to-baseline measure “leading.” If you use it another way you will probably be misunderstood.

By the way, the Chicago Manual’s treatment of typography is not well regarded by professionals in the field today. Much of the information is obsolete and irrelevant, or outright wrong.

>> The first thing I noticed about “autoleading” is that it adds extra space when the line contains a superscript or, in some typefaces, boldface text! <<

WSWin allows you to control that under Modify Paragraph Style, Options. Just uncheck Increase Line Height in the Super/Subscript section. The boldface text can be a problem in WSWin, however, because it has such a strong preference for autoleading. This happens fairly rarely, but when it does, I fix it by setting up a paragraph style called BodyBold, where I adjust the line height so that it doesn’t break the leading grid (see page ). Then I highlight the words I want in boldface and apply that style. Again, this effect is rare but possible.

>> Many people are obsessive about making all the lines on facing pages or in adjacent columns line up exactly, but I see occasional departures from this rule in material that I find attractive and that purports to be high class. <<

When it comes to page design, a person with a good eye, taste, and skill can break rules to good effect. After all, the goal is an attractive, easily read page, not adherence to a rule. However, most people who lay out pages don’t have the talent and skill to disregard the acquired wisdom of centuries of typographic practice. So the random baselines simply look sloppy and amateurish. I’d hate to mention the low standards for not just design, but also grammar and spelling, that I’ve seen in “high class” material.

What Is Hinting?

Scaleable fonts (TrueType or Type 1) store character outlines as mathematical routines. However, we don’t see routines, whether on screen or on paper. We see patterns of dots. Computer screens and printers all have a dot grid that corresponds to their resolution. Thus, a computer screen of 640 by 480 has 640 pixels across and 480 down; 800 by 600, 800 across by 600 down. And so forth. A 300 dpi laser printer has a grid of 300 dots per inch across and 300 dots down. A 600 dpi printer is 600 dots across per inch and 600 down. A letter-quality dot matrix printer might have 360 dots across and 180 down (in a manner of speaking).

The characters in a font have to be rasterized to be seen – that is, converted from mathematical formulae to dot representations. At low resolutions, such as a computer screen or a printer less than 600 dpi, many of the outlines will not fill a full dot on the grid. But a dot can only be off or on; the spot on the grid is either filled or not filled. The result is inaccurate and imperfect character outlines on screen and when printed at typical laser, inkjet, and dot matrix resolutions.

You can see for yourself. Draw a character like a B a couple of inches high on a sheet of graph paper. You will see that the curved parts of the B cross but do not fill various square locations on the grid. Now, since onscreen and in print, every location must either be completely filled or completely empty (on or off), go back and fill in or erase all those partly filled grid locations. What do you see? An unsmooth and rather ugly character. Can you fool around with the character to make it look better by adjusting some of the lines, moving them a little this way or that while still keeping the grid locations filled? Probably you can. That is hinting!

Basically, hinting is another mathematical routine to adjust the original outlines so they look better for low-resolution output. Although the original outlines are distorted by hinting, to our eyes they look less distorted and truer to the design of the font.

Alas, it is not true that all TrueType fonts are well hinted. Most of the el cheapo collections that are so popular among PC users are poorly hinted. Some of them aren’t hinted at all. Others are “autohinted” by programs like Fontographer, which is better than no hinting but quite a bit worse than well-done custom hinting. People who have developed an eye for type can tell at a glance when crummy fonts were used because the poor or no hinting makes the type look bad. By the way, the Arial and Times New Roman fonts that come with Windows are known for being exceptionally well hinted. Which is not to say that they are the only fonts you should ever use!!

If your work is being printed at 1200 dpi and over, hinting doesn’t enter in at all, because there are enough dot locations on the grid to render most characters accurately. At 300 dpi hinting is very important, at 600 dpi less so.

Type 1 fonts are favored more by typography and graphic design professionals and so, on the whole, they are better hinted – though they can be baddies, too. One thing you’re paying for when you buy a font for $100 from Adobe, say (as compared with 5,000 TrueTypes for $10 from Bushel O’ Fonts), is the careful hand hinting that was designed into the font.

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