Word Processing

By rowarrior

I'll admit it, I hate my handwriting, but I want to journal on my pages, given that it's the nearest thing to a diary future generations will ever get to see of me. Being a computer geek, naturally the computer was the obvious place for me to turn, but it has to be said, Times New Roman and Arial don't really float my boat any more than my handwriting does.  Which brings me to fonts.

There are thousands of free font resources out there (links to several good sites can be found at the bottom of this article), and you will no doubt be tempted to download everything in sight – after all they might come in useful at some stage, and we're all hoarders at heart! It's not the best idea to install each and every one of your new toys straight into your font directory though, as the more you have, the slower your word processor will be to load up, and other programs, such as Photoshop, might not open at all. Here are some font downloading tips for Windows PCs:

• When you click on the font download button in the site of your choice and it asks you where to save the file, create a new folder in your C drive to store them all
• Most fonts will download as zip files, so you will need some way of extracting them – Windows XP has this built in, but if you are on an earlier system you might want to download Winzip if you don't already have it to unzip the files.
• Once you have unzipped your fonts you can burn them to a cd to save space, and just install the fonts as you need them
• To view your fonts without installing them, the best program out there is X-Fonter which can easily be downloaded and will allow you to view and manipulate your fonts without having to install them into your font folder. It has 2 lists of fonts, ones that are already installed and ones that are not, and if you wish it can install any fonts that you want to use from the ‘not installed' list
• If you want to install your fonts by hand, you will need to either cut or copy from the folder you unzipped them into, and paste them into your font folder, which will usually have the path C:\Windows\Fonts

Once you've chosen your font, it's time to start writing. You can approach this in various ways, but if you have a specific area you want to fit your journaling into, the easiest way to ensure you don't go too big or too small is to use the text box option on your drawing menu. If you can't see the drawing toolbar already, go to ‘View' -> ‘Toolbars' and click on ‘Drawing' – it will usually appear at the bottom of the screen.

To create and size your textbox, you will need to do the following:

• Click on the following icon:

• Use the mouse to click and drag across the screen to create a box shape

• Right click on the shape and select the option at the bottom ‘Format Text Box…'
• Click on the size tab and enter what size you would like your journaling to be
• Enter your text, changing the font, and font size if necessary, to fit.<

It is particularly useful to do your journaling this way, as you then have a cutting line in the form of the black box around the text.

If you want to do something a little more interesting with your text, such as writing in a circle, you can buy one of the software programs to allow shaped text, but if you don't want to spend some of your hard earned scrap cash on a program you might not use often, you can always use Word Art. This little tool has been created by Microsoft to give you a range of optional effects for your text, the most useful of which can be used as follows:

• Want a circle of text? To do this you will need to select the third option from the left in the top row of Word Art. Enter your text in the pop-up box and choose your font and font size. Click okay, and when the text comes up you will see that it is slightly curved already. On the left-hand side you should see a little yellow diamond. Click on the diamond and drag it over to the right. As you do this you should see a dotted line coming both from where the diamond started, and from the other side where the text ended before. Once you have almost created an oval, release the mouse and your text should almost meet end to end. If it overlaps, drag the diamond back a little to the left until it looks readable. Now you need to format your Word Art to create your circle – you can either use the squares round the perimeter of the text, or you can right click on the text and choose ‘Format WordArt…'. In the box that comes up, click on size, and then adjust the height and width to be the same value.

• Want vertical text? This uses the option on the far right on the top row, and, quite simply, makes your text vertical!

• Want any other shape of text? Shadows? Check out the remaining Word Art options and see what you can achieve!

Another technique that you might want to try is having shapes of patterned paper onto your basic journaling paper, eg circles or squares. You could just cut the shapes and stick them straight onto the bg paper before printing, but if you want to be sure that some text gets printed on it, the best thing to do is to print onto both the bg paper and the patterned paper and then cut your shapes out in exactly the position you would like it to be in the text, then, lining up with the text printed on the bg paper, you can stick it on top and it will look as if you printed straight across everything.

Finally, you will need to print your journaling. As your standard office issue printer paper is not acid free, you probably don't want to use that, so you can either buy acid free paper or cardstock that is your standard printer size, or you can use a smaller piece of paper or card from your stash. Using a smaller piece will obviously save paper, but in order to get it through the printer you will need a piece of cheap printer paper which you will have to print your journaling onto first (you can use draft settings to save ink here). Cut the paper you want to print onto slightly bigger than the text box, and then using a small amount of repositionable adhesive, stick it over the printing on the printer paper. Now run the printer paper through the printer again and your journaling will be printed onto your desired paper. Peel the journaling off and trim down to the correct size.

The other printing alternative is to print directly onto your cardstock, but unless you have a 12”x12” printer it might seem a little more difficult if that is your paper size of choice, however Val has come up with the following solution:

• Cut your cardstock to 8.5 x 12. Keep the other part of the CS.

• Print your journaling where you would like it on the LO. If you want it to go all the way across the top or bottom, change the paper orientation to landscape and decrease the margins as much as you can.