Introduction to Desktop Publishing

Typeface

 

Typography is the process of selecting suitable type with which to display words, symbols and numerals. A typeface is a consistent design use for a complete set of characters. The word typeface is now synonymous with the word font.

 

Fonts

In the days when type was set by hand, most printers used only a few fonts. Today, with computer word processing and desktop publishing, the number of fonts available has exploded. Some example fonts are shown to the right.

  

Serif and sans serif

All fonts can be divided into two groups, serif and sans serif.
A serif is a curve or line attached to the end of a letterform. Fonts, which have these extra strokes, are called serif fonts. Serif fonts are generally easier to read and are therefore used for the body of a publication.
Sans serif fonts do not have the finishing strokes (the word 'san' is French for 'without'). San serif fonts tend to be more striking and tend to be used in headings and headlines.

  

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Anatomy of a font  

Size

The size of fonts is measured in points. There are 72 points to one inch (or 72 points to 2.54cm). The size of a font is measured from the top on the tallest ascender to the bottom of the lowest descender plus some extra above and below the type for a shoulder.

 

  

Weight

The weight of a font is the thickness of the lines making each letter. Most fonts have normal and bold weights.
As can be seen from the samples to the right, the weight of fonts vary considerably.

 

  

Slant

Characters can either be upright or be inclined at an angle. Upright characters are called normal.
Sloping characters are called italic or oblique.

 

  

To see how to adjust formatting in Publisher click here

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Character spacing

Fonts are supplied with a default distance between letters and lines.To improve readability and/or visual impact, the desktop publisher can vary these distances.

 

  

Kerning

Kerning is the process of increasing or decreasing the space between individual characters.
In our alphabet, characters such as the letters i,and l are very narrow while m and w are quite broad. In the days of typewriters, all letters were allocated the same amount of space on the paper irrespective of their natural width. Such fonts were called monospaced fonts.
Word processors have the ability to adjust the amount of space allocated to each letter depending upon the width of the character. Such fonts are called proportional fonts.
To see how to adjust kern in Publisher click here

The space between some letters appears to be greater because of the shape of the letter. For example, where the letters A and V appear together, they appear to be further apart than the letters M and N.
When creating Titles and headlines, it is well worth the effort to adjust letter spacing to achieve the most visually appealing result.

 

Tracking

Tracking is the process of adjusting the overall spacing between letters so it appears tighter or loose. Tracking can vary from tight to very loose.

Headings often have their tracking adjusted so they occupy the full width of a text frame.
To see how to adjust tracking in Publisher click here

Leading

In the times when type was composed by hand, building lines from individual lead letters, additional space between lines of text was achieved by inserting strips of lead. Thus the term leading refers to the process of adjusting the space between lines of text. Lines that are close together are referred to as tight while lines with large amounts of space are said to be open.

To see how to adjust leading in Publisher click here

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Alignment

Alignment refers to the shape of the block of text in relation to the margins.
The most common alignments are left, right, centred and justified. The text boxes shown below represent each of these four alignment types.


 

Tabs

Tabs are used when information needs to be set out in column format (but not placed in a table). It is often best to take control of the set-up of the tabs yourself rather than use the default state.

Example showing left, right, centre and decimal tabs

When all characters are viewed (click on the icon on the toolbar) there should be only one tab stop (indicated by an arrow ) between columns of information. The example table above appears as shown below

Example shown above viewed with all characers turned on.

It is not advised to align text by inserting more spaces between letters by hitting the space bar..

Tabs can be set to have leaders - dots, dashes or lines which join the information at the tab stops. These can help the eye to align information and so aid the interpretation of the data.

The same example using leaders

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Indents

Indent refers to the way in which paragraphs are set away from the margin.

Example indents

To see how to set indents in Publisher click here

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Styles

A style is simply a collection of formatting which is given a name.

Learning to use style sheets can save you more time than any other feature in a word processing or desktop publishing program. Most people are already able format text using features available on the format menu, and consequently already know a great deal about how to define a style. The difference is that instead of specifying half a dozen attributes (font, size, leading, indents etc) for a single unit of selected text, you give that collection of attributes a name. The name is the style, the attributes are the style definition.

Using Styles:


Once you have defined a style, you can apply all its attributes to selected text just by clicking on the name of the style, instead of having to specify each attribute individually. One click instead of many!

When styles have been applied throughout a document you can easily change the formatting of the entire manuscript. If you want to change all subheadings from Arial to Bookman font, simply change the style definition and all subheadings will change.

Styles ensure consistency among similar pieces of text in a publication. Whenever you have a subheading, apply the subheading style and all subheadings will look alike.

To see how to create and use styles in Publisher click here

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Copyright © Dubbo College 2003 - Bryan Jeffress HTTL

Last updated July 2003