I do understand what font height is, though of course in the "soft fonts" we
deal with nowadays, with variable amounts of leading built in, it's a little
harder to be aware of. FWIW, my grandfather was a printer and publisher
(Linotype mostly).
I can imagine that typed labels would compare unfavorably with printed ones.
I can actually remember a time when offset printing was compared unfavorably
to letterpress; when our church bulletins made the switch, I could
definitely tell the difference.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
"grammatim" wrote in message
...
"Font height" refers to the height of the piece of type rather than to
the height of a letter. In fonts designed to be set closely, there's
minimal clearance between the top of the highest ascender (ascenders
normally are a tad higher than the upper bound of an H or M) or lowest
descender and the edge of the piece of type; in fonts meant to have
"breathing room" without adding leading (a time-consuming procedure),
there'll be more clearance. But an em-quad (i.e., -square) will always
be square -- it'll look like a bigger space in the more "roomy" font.
I got to Chicago a few months after the old handpress used for
printing museum labels -- and for printing texts in Arabic, Syriac,
Coptic, Egyptian hieroglyphs -- was taken out of service at the
Oriental Institute (maybe it was sold for scrap). (The exotic types
went to the University's Printing Department, which did a lot of the
Press's typesetting but used Linotype, and about twenty years later
the Provost, a leading archeologist and former OI director, forbade
them from disposing of the old type.) My first student job was as
research assistant to the Institute's director, so I just missed the
opportunity for hands-on experience with handset type. Museum labels
were done on a Selectric for a number of years. They did _not_ make a
good impression in cases alongside those with older exhibits and hence
older labels.
On Apr 12, 10:19 am, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
Maybe. Allowing for the inevitable inaccuracy of screen display, in both
Times New Roman and Arial (at 500% zoom), the en and em dash are closer to
the width of the capital N and M, but the en dash is narrower than N, and
the M dash is wider than M. Also, I must say that at that magnification
the
em dash does appear to be twice as wide as the en.
I'm sure it varies a great deal from one font to another. In most fonts a
string of em dashes will be continuous, but in some fonts the em dash is
designed with some space on either side so that a series of them creates a
broken line. Presumably this sort of em dash was designed for use in the
UK
where a spaced en dash is preferred.
In any case, if, as the Chicago Manual says, the width of the em is the
same
as the nominal font height, then the capital M would come much closer to
being square than the lowercase.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
"grammatim" wrote in message
...
lowercase.
On Apr 11, 5:29 pm, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
Historically, an en dash/space is the width of a capital N in the given
font, the em dash/space the width of M (hence the names). Pace the
Chicago
Manual, I don't know of any font in which an en dash/space is half the
width
of an em dash/space.
I am aware that "the space of the line" is variable, but by "ordinary
space"
I refer to the width of a space in unjustified text (or of a nonbreaking
space).
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
"grammatim" wrote in message
...
You might think so, but see the Chicago Manual p. 828 (glossary) s.v.
em and en.
Ordinary spaces are variable, since the default until fairly recently
was justified text.
FrameMaker also gives you a Numerical space (the width of each digit
in the font, for aligning columns without using right-tabs) and a
Hairspace.
On Apr 11, 9:32 am, "Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
In any case, I would expect double en space to be longer than an em
space.
I
gauge ordinary spaces, en spaces, and em spaces to be in approximately
a
1:2:3 proportion.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
"grammatim" wrote in message
...
In the Bullets & Numbering panes, you can specify the characters
(including spaces) that appear after the autonumbers. "Double en"
should be the same as em space.
Oops, I'm thinking of FrameMaker again, which includes both of
those ...
On Apr 10, 7:05 pm, Malcolm Patterson
wrote:
Hmm. If Office were installed on my machine as a British English
package,
I
could agree with you sometimes--if you were using the en dash in
lieu
of
an
American em dash. OTOH, I think the Brits use the en-dash as we do
in
America
for spanning a range (closed up), so to me (in the States, where the
en
dash
is ALWAYS closed up) this is nothing but an annoying bug. My
Canadian
neighbors will have to manage their usual balancing act.
Meanwhile, I do as you do: keyboard shortcuts whenever available.
I do wish there were a standard shortcut for the double en space
(after
heading numerals and before the heading text) and the thin space
(for
footnotes, etc.).
"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
The space before and after the en dash are correct for the way it
is
being
used; in the U.K. a spaced en dash is used where an em dash
(without
spaces)
is used in the U.S. There is no AutoFormat option that will
produce
an
en
dash between continuous numbers or elsewhere to indicate "to." For
that
you
have to use a keyboard shortcut; I just find it easier to use
keyboard
shortcuts for both dashes all the time.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
"Malcolm Patterson"
wrote
in
...
This is true, but alas, when you get an en dash in this manner,
the
space
before the dash remains, which is incorrect (it *must* be
removed
to
correctly punctuate the document).
An en dash can be inserted with Ctrl+Num- (the minus key in the
numeric
keypad)
An em dash can be inserted with Ctrl+Alt+Num-
Both can be inserted using the Insert/Symbol menu's special
characters
tab.
"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
If you have the relevant option selected in Tools | AutoCorrect
|
AutoFormat
As You Type, Word performs the following conversions:
If you type -- (two hyphens) between words with no spaces
before
or
after,
the two hyphens will be converted to an em dash when you type a
space
or
punctuation following the word after the hyphens.
If you type one or two hyphens betweens words with a space
before
or
a
space
before and after, you'll get an en dash instead.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site:http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
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"BorisS" wrote in message
...
there is a behavior that Word has which extends a hyphen
followed
by
text
into a long hyphen. What is this, and how can I control it? I
actually
like
it, but because I don't know what drives it, cannot always
replicate it
for
some reason. Is this some sort of symbol it defaults to
replacing
a
regular
hyphen with? Or something else?---