I’m proofreading a .doc file for someone using Word for Mac. I need to type a syllable stress mark, which I found in the Character Viewer. In the lower right corner of the Character Viewer window is a section called Font Variation that shows the same character in various sizes and styles. I want to see how some of the different variations look in my document, but no matter which one I double click on, they all show up in the document looking the same. Am I missing something, or just misunderstanding the information?
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Cameron
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How Do I Use the Different Font Variations In the Character Viewer?
Comments: One Response to “How Do I Use the Different Font Variations In the Character Viewer?”
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It is tricky to use those, because you need to pay attention to the font.
So, for instance, in Pages if you are typing in Times font, and you find a character like U+02C8 (the syllable stress mark) and drag and drop it into your document, you get that character (U+02C8) but in the font you are using. In this case Times.
If you look at the Font Variations, you are seeing that same character but in different fonts. It notes the font above those. So you may see a good one in Baskerville font. But if you drag and drop from there to your document, you still are telling Pages to use that character in the current font used in that position of your document.
I'm not sure if it works the same in Word, but I assume so. I don't have Word with me at the moment.
So how to get the Font Variation? A sure-fire way is to note the font, insert the character, and then select the character and change it to the same font in Pages/Word. So insert U+02C8, select it, change the font of that one character to Baskerville.
Another way, that seems to work sometimes in Pages, is to double-click the character in Character Viewer. When I do that, most of the time, it inserts the character and uses the font. But experimenting just now, it sometimes does and sometimes doesn't. Perhaps it never does in Word.
If that is the case, then insert it once, change the font to match. Then maybe copy and paste from that one character when you need it again.
Word is deep and complex and I wouldn't be surprised if there is a setting that adjusts this or a way to insert editing marks such as this that is unique to Word. It has 20+ years of legacy functions so it is hard to guess without a good look.