Hello Writing-Community, Ok. I write with Word. It’s a perfect program. But it also has some problem. One of the problem is that you can’t watch how it looks when it is printed. The size of the text too. For example, on the screen looks “Baskerville” with the size 12 good. But when you’re printing it—it looks big and bad. So, how can I find out—on screen—how the size looks? Do you have some tips or tricks? beehoney
What is your Page Layout set to? Go to View on the top ribbon, and you should find Full Screen, Print Layout, and Outline on the left hand side of the dropbar. Click on Print Layout, and you can no write on each individual page. Make sure your zoom is set at 100%, and in Page Layout you select the Size of the paper you are printing on. I hope this helps.
also screen fonts vs print fonts .... a lot of fonts you find in word are screen fonts and don't render well in print. Assuming you are self publishing its worth investing in something like Vellum to do your final formatting
You should ditch MS Word and try Adobe InDesign. With InDesign, what you see is what you get. Everything; formatting, illustrations, font hybrids, text flow, drop caps, etc, you simply export your manuscript in whatever format and resolution you want. Also, as Big Soft Moose mentioned you're probably using cheap fonts that aren't very flexible and don't print well. Go to a reputable font site and purchase professional fonts. You'll be amazed at how much better they look.
that said indesign is a DTP program - its not for writing in, so I'd suggest writing in word or scriv or whatever then moving to indesign/vellum etc for formatting once you've done all your edits and what have you You can also use a service like draft to digital to do your formatting for you... no up front cost but they take about 10% of the retail price (15% of net royalty)
Neither do I... well, I do, but I have other things I'd rather spend it on. That's why I joined Adobe Creative Cloud and pay a small monthly fee for their entire suite of apps, which includes fonts. It's not so expensive.
The reason I use InDesign is because my WIP will have several illustrations. It's just so much easier staying within the Adobe family of apps. There's no surprises. I just checked out Vellum, and it does look interesting... can it handle illustrations?
I don't know off the top of my head.. I've only used it for fiction so far One point of note is vellum is mac only ... I bought a second hand Imac pretty much so that I could use it
http://www.adobe.com/uk/creativecloud/buy/students.html?sdid=KKTYO&mv=search&s_kwcid=AL!3085!3!184800921087!b!!g!!adobe%20student%20discount%20creative%20cloud&ef_id=VlBBBQAAAU8R1z0g:20171104130802:s £16.24 pcm for students £49.99 pcm for normal folk or about the same in USD - basically students and teachers get a 65-70% discount
I don't think Adobe has student pricing, though they might. It's $19.99/month for unlimited use of one app, and that includes a large font library. It's $49.99/month for unlimited use of the entire suite of apps (InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition, and on and on), and access to their professional font library. I've included a screen grab of the first pages of chapter two of my WIP from within InDesign. As you can see it is not at all like MS Word. Illustrations in whatever resolution I need, fonts displayed as they'll look when printed, real drop caps, and even a cool background as if it's an old library book. When it's time to send a chapter off to my editor I simply copy and paste it into MS Word and send it to her. Also, it would seem you're really into fonts. I know I am. You won't believe the typography options you get with InDesign. It blows Word away. If you need help finding professional fonts at reasonable prices, well, just ask.
In Germany, there's currently a special offer for Student's pricing. All of Adobe for ~€20 per month for the first year. There might be one for other countries, too. (They DO have Student offers.)
@Iain Sparrow Well, it's very expensive. I looked it in € (I live in Germany) and it's very expensive. 20,00€ per month. Thats make 240€ per year! (For all apps.)
For what it's worth: As far as I am told, Microsoft's publishing department (the one that makes print manuals, brochures etc.) does NOT use Word or Publisher ... They're full on Adobe, too...
That's not expensive - for non students its closer to 600 If you look at it another way 20 euros is a couple of nights out a month... stay in and write instead, problem solved
@big soft moose Well, I mean the American words. I still go to school. My class is very similar to sophomore.
Fair enough so you're a teenager ... I can see that 20 euros a month might be out of your reach. I'd say Scribus (which is freeware) or serifpage plus which is $19.99
1) For the size view: If you're in Word, or another WYSIWYG word processor, the zoom option should have an option to show you the whole page (named "Fit Page" or "Show Entire Page" or some such; I don't have Word right now, so I don't know what it says in there). Since you know the size of the page (usually set to A4 or letter, if set for a normal printer), it allows you to estimate the size of your text in relation to that. Make the window large enough, or fullscreen, to make it easier. 2) For recommendation of other software it would be helpful to tell us if you're on Windows or Mac. The available options, in particular for text based applications like word processors, do vary quite a bit. The mentioned Serif PagePlus, for instance, is Windows only, IIRC, and not under active development any more. Because the company, Serif, has switched development to Mac primarily, and Windows second. They do make the photo editor Affinity Photo (the photo editor I recommend most right now as alternative to Adobe PhotoShop) and the vector drawing program Affinity Designer (also highly recommended; both programs are Mac and Windows right now, ~€50 one time each. There is educational pricing on request.), and are working on a Desktop Publishing application named Affinity Publisher (there was a beta promised for this year, but they probably won't manage that). 3) I am German. Ich kann auch Deutsch. Allerdings arbeite ich meistens mit Software in Englisch... Ich weiß häufig nicht was genau auf dem Bildschirm steht wenn Deine Software auf Deutsch ist...
