Changing the Font Part 1 in PowerPoint 2010
IN THIS CHAPTER Understanding text formatting Changing the font Changing the font size Adjusting character spacing Changing font color/text fill Applying a text outline Applying text attributes Applying WordArt styles Applying text effects Copying formatting with Format Painter Inserting symbols Inserting math equations Text formatting is formatting that you can apply to individual characters of text.
It includes font (typeface), size, attributes such as bold and underline, fill color, and border color. (Formatting that affects entire paragraphs only, such as indentation or bullet style, is called paragraph formatting, not text formatting, and is covered in Chapter 7.) As you learned in Chapter 5, PowerPoint automates text formatting by applying themes to slide masters. The slide masters then dictate the default text size, font, color, and attributes that should be used on slides. By applying text formatting through the slide masters, rather than to individual slides, you ensure consistency and make it much easier to make global font changes later on.
However, you may need to change the formatting of some text. For example, the font size for titles on the slide master may be a bit too large; in this case, you can decrease the font size for the Title placeholder, and this change will apply to all of the layouts for that master. You can even save the changes to a new theme file so that you can reuse the theme with the smaller title text later on.
In some cases, you might need to manually change the text formatting for an individual text box, or even an individual paragraph or word. For example, you may create text boxes manually that label the parts of a diagram; in this case, you would probably want to use a fixed font and size for those labels, so that they do not change if you switch themes later on. There are several ways to change the font that is used in a presentation.
Whenever possible, in order to maintain consistency, you should use the method that affects an entire slide master. However, in some cases, you may need to change the font in an individual text box, or even individual characters within the text box. Office 2010 comes with a lot of different fonts, and you may also have acquired some additional fonts by installing other programs. A font is a typeface, or a style of lettering. To see an example of two different font styles, compare the lettering of the preceding heading to the lettering in this paragraph.
Note In the past, when most fonts were not scalable, a distinction was sometimes drawn between the term ‘‘typeface’’ — referring to a certain style of lettering — and the term ‘‘font’’ — which referred to a specific typeface used at a certain size, with a certain combination of attributes, such as bold and italic. Nowadays, however, the terms font and typeface are synonymous for all practical purposes. Windows fonts are generic — that is, they work with any program. For example, a font that came with a desktop publishing program such as Adobe InDesign also works with Microsoft Word and with PowerPoint. Within PowerPoint, you have access to all of the installed Windows fonts on your system.
The majority of the fonts that come with Windows and Office are scalable, OpenType or True- Type fonts. These are outline fonts, which means that they consist of unfilled, mathematically created outlines of each character. When you assign a size, you are sizing the outline; each outline is then filled in with black (or whatever color you choose) to form each character.
As a result, these fonts look good at any size. PowerPoint’s Font list does not differentiate between OpenType and TrueType fonts, and both are marked with TT icons to their left, as shown in Figure 6-1. (A few proprietary fonts might show an O icon, for OpenType, instead of TT.) Depending on the default printer, PowerPoint’s Font list may also contain fonts that have printer icons to their left. These are printer-resident fonts, and they are built into the default printer that you have set up in Windows. Figure 6-1 shows one such font, AvantGarde. You should not use these fonts in a presentation that you plan to show on another computer or distribute to others electronically, because not everyone will have these fonts available.
In terms of appearance, there are two basic groups of fonts: serif (those with little tails on each letter, such as the small horizontal lines at the bases of the letters i and t) and sans-serif (those without the tails). The regular paragraph text in this book uses a serif font. The headings use a sans-serif font.
Choosing the Right Fonts A font can make a tremendous difference in the readability and appeal of your presentation, so selecting the right ones is very important. But how do you choose from among all of the fonts that are installed on your system? Here are some general rules:
Strive for consistency. (Yes, I keep harping on that, but it’s important.) You should avoid changing the font on an individual slide, and instead, make font changes to the slide master, or, in some cases, to a master layout.
Whenever possible, rather than choosing a fixed font, use the (Headings) or (Body) placeholders at the top of the Font menu (see Figure 6-1). You can then redefine those placeholders using a font theme. This makes it much easier to change the fonts for the entire presentation later on. Try to use a sans-serif font for the ‘‘Headings’’ font, because sans-serif is easier to read at large sizes.
Use serif fonts for the body if the presentation is very text-heavy, because serif fonts are easier to read in long paragraphs (such as in this book).
Avoid serif fonts for tiny text, because the serifs tend to break up onscreen at small sizes. Avoid script fonts in presentations, because they are hard to read. Avoid novelty fonts, because they take the focus away from your message. Another consideration when choosing fonts is whether the PC on which you present the show is likely to have the same fonts installed. If you stick with Windows-supplied fonts such as Arial and Times New Roman, which are available in Windows XP and newer versions, this is a non-issue. However, if you use a font that came with Office 2007 and 2010 only, such as Calibri, but you plan to present on a PC that uses Office 2003 or earlier, then you might want to embed the fonts in the presentation when you are saving it. If you present or edit the show on a PC that does not have the right fonts, and the fonts are not embedded, then PowerPoint will use fonts that are as close as possible to a match. Although this is helpful, it can also cause strange and unexpected line breaks in your text.
Tip When you install the Compatibility Pack in an earlier version of PowerPoint, it not only enables you to open PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 files, but it also installs the fonts introduced in PowerPoint 2007/2010, such as Calibri. Tip To embed fonts when saving the presentation, choose Tools Save Options in the Save As dialog box.
Select the Embed Fonts in the File check box, and click OK. Tip If you end up on the other side of that equation and are stuck with a presentation that uses fonts that your system doesn’t have, use Replace Fonts to replace all instances of the missing font with one that is available on your PC. See ‘‘Replacing Fonts’’ later in this chapter. Changing the Font Theme Choosing a different font theme is covered in Chapter 5 because of the connection between themes and fonts, but let’s have another look at it here in the context of font formatting.
A font theme is a specification that names two fonts: one for headings (titles) and one for body text (everything else). Font themes apply to all text that uses the font placeholders rather than a fixed font. To switch to a different font theme, follow these steps:
1. On the Design tab, click Fonts. The Fonts menu opens to display samples of the available themes. These include both built-in font themes and any custom themes that you’ve created.
2. Hover the mouse pointer over a theme to see it previewed on the slide.
3. Click the font theme that you want.