Make text legible on screen without affecting print size

Columns and colour
This magazine is set in columns, making it easier to read and giving a flexible layout.

You can use columns in your own documents, but unless you get it right, the results can look terrible.

The most common type measurement is the point, of which there are approximately 72 to the inch.

So, 12-point type measures one-sixth of an inch, or 4.23mm.

As we touched on while zooming, type at a given size is far more legible on paper than on screen.

Typically Windows is set up to a resolution of 96 dots per inch, but even cheap printers can output at three times this figure.

Although this is something of a simplification, the punchline is that you can use smaller type sizes ­ 10 point or even less ­ for printed pages.

Problems arise when the type size is too great for the column width, and you should aim for an average of at least five or six words per line.

If your columns are fully justified ­ with straight left and right margins ­ you will find that you have stretched lines, and possibly ugly ‘rivers’ of white space snaking down the column.

There are several things you can do about this, alone and in combination.

The first is justification. Use a straight left margin with a ‘ragged right’ margin.

Although this gives uneven line lengths, the text density or ‘colour’ is better and it’s easier to read.

Another trick is to reduce the font size ­ a one-point reduction can make a substantial difference.

If you prefer narrow, fully justified columns, then hyphenation may be the answer.

Look how hyphenating the word ‘incongruous’ in the right-hand column gets rid of that stretched second line seen in the left-hand column.

Word provides two methods of doing this, which you’ll find on the Page Layout ribbon in 2007 and the Tools, Language menu in earlier versions.

Automatic hyphenation breaks words where Word’s hyphenation dictionary thinks fit and, like page numbering, it dynamically updates as you edit the document.

Manual hyphenation suggests candidates but gives you control of where words split. In the latter case, the hyphens are ‘optional’; turn on the view of formatting characters and you’ll see they appear as the L-on-its-side symbol that baffled us in the Hands On Better Bookmarks column, and in normal view they will vanish if editing makes them unnecessary.

In both cases you can opt not to split capitalised words, limit the number of consecutive hyphens and set the hyphenation zone ­ the hypothetical maximum space between the end of a line and the right margin.

By default, automatic hyphenation covers the entire document, but you can exclude portions by setting the paragraph formatting to ‘Don’t hyphenate’.

Quick tip
Here’s a trick for inserting hyperlinks to web pages in Word.

Start Internet Explorer and navigate to the page you want to link.

Switch to Word and Insert, Hyperlink. With the dialogue box open, switch to Internet Explorer, then back to Word.

The Address box will be filled-in with the URL of the page, and the ‘Text to Display’ will show the name as shown in the IE title bar.This works with Word 2003 and 2007, but only with IE.