Word processing

Computer Literacy 115 September 2008

History of word processing Hand writing

+ totally free design (e.g. codex)– error correction is hard,– only one copy.

Printing+ design is quite free,+ made by specialists (copy editor, editor, typographer, proofreader,

printer),– only high number of copies (>300),– one correction per edition.

Typewriter+ fast and cheap,– design is limited,– one type face, monospace letters,– error correction is complicated,– only one copy.

Word processing with computers+ Free Design,+ easy error correction, modifying, retrieval,+ flexible number of copies (printer to print shop),+ structure can be separated from the formatting,+ formulas, tables, images, drawings can be included easily,+ automatic spell checking,+ creating table of contents, index, cross references,+ mail merge (connection with database),+ recording repeating tasks (macro, scripts),+ hypertext,– no specialists (we are the editor, the typographer,

proofreader and the printer).

Typographical units didot-point (p): 1 m = 2660 p (European)

1 p 0,3759 mm 12 p = 1 cic (cicero) 4,511 mm

pica-point (pt): 1" 72 pt (English) use by computers 1 pt 0,3514 mm 12 pt = 1 pi (pica) = 4,2164 mm

relative units of length: 1 ex: x-height, height of the letter x. 1 em: the actual letter height (equal to the width of letter

m).Remark.: in most of the cases the MS Word uses the pica-point (pt), but when

setting a value pt, pi, " (inch), mm, cm units may also be used.

Character encoding systems ASCII code set (ANSI X3.4-1968)

Codes from 0127 (7 bit), English small and capital letters, numerals, punctuation marks, some

other characters, control characters. ASCII extensions (e.g. iso-8859-n, windows-1250)

Codes from 128255 (8 bit), accented letters, other special characters, different standards (DOS and Windows uses different code pages with

automatic conversion in certain cases) Unicode (1991, www.unicode.org)

Codes from 065535 (16 bit), with extension, more than one million all letters of all languages have their own character set, the standard is still under extension (now: ISO 10646:2000).

Code of the Enter (line-end character): DOS, Windows: 13 (Carriage Return, CR) + 10 (Line Feed, LF) UNIX, Linux: 10 (CR) Macintosh: 13 (LF)

Character Map

Browser

Shape of letters 1 Raster font: the shape of a letter is

described as an image– resolution cannot be changed,– different screen and printer font is necessary due

to the different resolution,– all sizes need a separate set,+ the shape may be optimized for the resolution

and size (important for small sizes).

Character formatting

Windows XP raster fonts: Courier, MS Sans Serif, MS Serif, Small, Symbol.

Capital A of MS Serif 24 pt

Vector font: the shape is described by the center line no fill-in, otherwise similar to the outline fonts, used by CAD applications.

Windows XP vector fonts: Modern, Roman, Script.

Shape of letters 2 Outline font: the contour of the

letters are described by Bézier-curves, and the inner parts are filled-in (e.g. Open-Type, TrueType, Postscript fonts) + may be scaled, rotated, distorted,+ same description may be used for screen

and print,+ kerning table,– result of distortion is usually awkward,– on screen in small size unreadable (needs

substituting raster font),– in small sizes not harmonic,

1 ex

1 em

baseline

Times New Roman letters Aj

Character formatting

Typefaces and type styles Type face: an alphabet and other signs designed on the

same principle. A Type face includes Type styles according to

line-weight: light, normal, bold, demi, black, heavy, letter-width: condensed, normal, extended, function: plain, italic or cursive (oblique, slanted),

small caps, decoration: filled, outline, shadow, superscript,

subscript, chisel (emboss, engrave, etc.). The (existing) styles of a type faces is the Type Family.

Remark: the styles may be generated by the computer from the plain style with geometric distortion. The cursive, bold and small caps should not be generated this way because the result is awkward.

E.g. Times New Roman cursive vs. slanted (oblique):

example

Character formatting

Serif: the serif makes the text more readable on paper: it shows

the baseline and so guides the eyes (e.g. Times New Roman).

Sans Serif: to be used in titles, headlines, posters, on screen (e.g.

Arial, Verdana).

Monotype, typewriter face: all letters has the same width (e.g. i and m): text or numbers

written above each other like a table (e.g. Courier New).

Proportional: each letter has a different width. Most of the type faces are this

type.

Classification of Type facesCharacter formatting

Historical classification of type faces

Renaissance (Bembo, Garamond, Plantin, Centaur, Sabon) Baroque (Tótfalusi, Fournier, Caslon, Baskerville, Times) Classicistic (Bodoni, Didot, Walbaum, Thorne, Zapf Int.) Egyptienne (Rockwell, Memphis, Stymie, Karnak, Serifa) Grotesque (Futura, Helvetica, Univers) Clarendon (New Century Schoolbook, Extended, Primus) Varia (Optima, Clearface Gothic, Romic) Eclectic (Clearface, Cheltenham, Bookman, Korinna) Secession (Desdemona, Benguiat, Arnold Böcklin) Art Deco (Bernhard, Belwe, Anna, Industria) Constructivist (Bauhaus, Variex, Triplex) Epigraph (Medici, Charlemagne, Copperplate 31) Chisel and commercials (Stencil, Wide Latin, Chisel) Hand-writing (Regency, Zapf Chancery, Vivaldi, Mistral) Gothic (Linotext, Tudor, London) Non-Latin

Character formatting

Using type styles Emphasis in text:

cursive is used to emphasize a word, in a cursive text use normal, expanding, underline is not attractive, former does not really emphasize, bold only the first words of a list (e.g. encyclopedia, dictionary), small caps is used for names, first letter is capital, all caps is like we would shout, and hard to read.

Emphasis in headings: all caps, except of hand-written and gothic type faces (unreadable), bold, small caps, underline, center aligned, etc.

Using different type faces helps understanding (emphasis), reviewing (hierarchy of headings, lists, table of contents, index, etc.).

Guide to mixing of type faces: the mixed types should differ in more than one attributes, the difference between sizes should be well defined (at least 1.5 times), the different type faces should be in different classes (e.g. serif sans serif), in general: if there is a difference, it should be dramatic.

Using type styles examples

Type facesCharacter formatting

Some rules of typing Exactly one space between two words and after a

sentence. Punctuation marks (comma, point, question mark, etc.)

follow the word without any space, but a space is needed after them.

Parenthesis includes the text without space, but spaces are needed around them.

It is a bad habit to position the text with several spaces, it will be misaligned in the printed version. Use tabs or tables instead.

The paragraph is finished with one Enter. A list in a text is also a sentence, so the punctuation

marks should be placed; similar for the formulas. No full-stop after measure units (e.g. cm).

Typing

Special characters Paragraph mark: ¶ (Enter key) Tabulator: (Tab key) New line (in a paragraph): (Shift-Enter) en space

thousand separator: 1 000 000, in case of two authors: Michelson Morley

Non-breaking space: ° e.g. before units: 12°kg, in date: 750°BC, name of a king or queen:

Elisabeth°II. Optional hyphen: ¬

suggested place for hyphenation. Non-breaking hyphen: -

otherwise the hyphen may followed by line break.

Remark: these non-printing characters are shown only if the Show All ¶ button is on.

Typing

Use of punctuation marks 1 quotes, apostrophes, primes

quotation marks (99 shaped): Hungarian: „nn «nn» nn”

(U+201E, U+00AB, U+00BB, U+201D) English: ‘nn “nn” nn’

(U+2018, U+201C, U+201D, U+2019) American: “nn ‘nn’ nn” German: „nn ‚nn‘ nn” or »nn ‚nn‘ nn« French: «nn «nn» nn»

apostrophe: I’m fool (9 shaped) (U+2019) foot, inch: 6' 10'' (straight prime) (U+0027, U+0022) angle degree, minute, second: 15°12´10˝ (slanted

prime, U+00BA, U+2032, U+2033)

Typing

Use of punctuation marks 2 hyphens, dashes

em-dash (same length as letter m) as dash: always in pairs, like nnnnnnnnn (in English,

without spaces), en-dash (same length as letter n)

as dash: nnn nnn nnn (with spaces, in Hungarian), as long hyphen:

184849, BoyleMariotte law.

hyphen (shorter than en-dash) as a hyphen: one-by-one, Add-in, hyphenation (usually automatic).

Typing

Use of punctuation marks 3 Replacements (red: incorrect):

multiplication: a x b, a×b division: a/b, a÷b parenthesis: nn /nn/ nn, nn (nn) nn zero: o, O, 0

small letter o, capital letter o, number zero one: I, l, 1,

capital letter i, small letter l, number one some upper indices and fractions exist as special

characters: ª, ², ³, ¹, º, ¼, ½, ¾ ⅓, ⅔, ⅕, ⅖, ⅗, ⅘, ⅙, ⅚, ⅛, ⅜, ⅝, ⅞ (depends on typeface)

ellipse: ... , . . . , …three dots, three dots with spaces, ellipse character

copyright: (c), ©

Typing

Copyright

© Budapest University of Technology and EconomicsDepartement of Architectural Representation Tamás Fejér, 2002–2008.