Adjusting the font characteristics

Changing Font Characteristics:

Another neat thing you can try to make your document a little fancier, or add a little color to it, is by changing the Font characteristics.

What is font?

A Font is how a letter looks or a section of text is designed. The four main font characteristics that we are going to discuss in this lesson are: letter type, the letter size, the style, and the color of the letters.

Changing the font

To change the font, you must first select the exact text in which you want to change its look. Then press the "control D" command. This keystroke opens the font dialog window and places you into the list of letter types you can choose from. These choices in this list are the design of the letter; whether it is fancy or standard looking.

You can press the down arrow through the list until you get to the letter type you want or if you know what type you want, just press the first letter of that type. JAWS does not usually say anything; but you land on the first option that starts with that letter. Arrow up first and then down arrow through the current options to find the one you are seeking. When you found it, shift tab until you get to the ok button and press the spacebar. Remember that your text is still selected so you will need to arrow left once to unselect the text before you mess it up by accident and then you can see your changed text.

Changing the Stile

To change the style, you must select the text of course, then press "control D." Then you can press tab once to move into the style list. Then you can down arrow through five or six options. These have to do with the: normal style, italic, bold or both Italic and bold. Stop on the one you want then Shift tab to the ok button and press enter.

Changing the size of your letters

Select your text, press the "Control D" command and tab two times to be placed in a list of numbers where you can change the size to as low as six and the largest is 72. Just down arrow to the number that best fits the size you want. The higher the number, the larger the letter will appear on the page. Keep in mind that JAWS will start losing focus after a certain size. You may only need to change the size when you need to let someone who is low vision see what you have typed. If you are just changing a title or a heading to a different size a little larger, then you should not have any trouble reading it. 14 is considered to be large print. The default is 12. Remember to shift tab to the ok button and press enter.

Changing the color

The last characteristic we are going to discuss is the color of the letters you can change. Remember, you must select what text you want to change the color. Now open the font menu again with "control D" and tab four times to hear "font color button menu, automatic". Press the spacebar to get into the color list. Now you can down arrow to move into the list of colors you can select. It seems, down arrow selects a main color and right or left arrow selects the shade of the color. At the end of the color list is a button for even more colors. Press the spacebar to activate this option to seen more extensive colors. When you land on the color you want, press the enter key to activate that color.

Now press the shift tab command to move to the "ok button". Press the spacebar to save your changes and it will take you out of the font menu.

All these changes are temporary. You will need to save the document if you want to keep your changes. If you close the document or program, you will be asked to save the changes. You can press y or n for yes or no, depending on what you want at the time.

This concludes the lesson on changing the font characteristics.

Press enter on the next link to begin the Spell Checker lesson. Run the Spell Checker

End of Lesson.