FAQS! FACTS! FAX! 178 (09/09/99)

BRACE YOURSELF!

Re 'One For You F!F!F! August 26, an easy way to insert a variable-sized curly bracket or 'brace' is to go to Object on the Insert menu and select the Create New tab. Click on Microsoft Equation 3.0 and on the menu displayed select "Fence Templates" (bottom - left box) and choose the bracket style of your choice. To increase the vertical size of the bracket, just click in the outline box to the left (or right) of the bracket and insert the required number of "returns" until the desired size is achieved. To place this bracket anywhere on the page, go to Format > Object > Position - enter a tick in "Float over text". Then go to Wrapping and click in "none". This will allow you to place the bracket in any position on the document.

Geoff Livesey, Huby, York

From the drawing toolbar, click the "Autoshapes" button and select "Basic Shapes". Select the bracket type you want and then insert it on to your document in the same way as you would a line. The size, shape, etc. can be altered in the usual way by dragging on the corners of the inserted shape.
Rachel Bailey

You can put a large enclosing bracket by several lines of text by inserting a text box (Format/Text Box) next to them and putting in the bracket symbol and adjusting the font size.

Brenda Herrick

Insert the bracket symbol at the start of the line and then make it into a dropped capital? This gives you a bracket sign in the left margin that will cover two or three lines. You can extend it to more but then it looks rather thick and ugly.

Kenneth Cooper

To create a bracket around multiple lines, you can use an equation field. Create a field (Ctrl-F9 by default) and type 'EQ \b \bc\X (\a \aY (line1,line2,line3,...)) ', where X is the character you want to use. If you use the left-hand form of a bracket (e.g. (,[,<, or { ) Word will automatically close the bracket using the right-hand form. If you want your bracket to appear only on one side of the text, replace \bc with \lc (for left-hand bracket) or \rc (for right-hand bracket). Y is the alignment within the columns for the lines that you want to bracket. It can be l (left), r (right) or c (centre). You will also need to align the whole field appropriately using the normal formatting commands for text. line1, line2 and line3 are the lines of text that you want to bracket. You can format these as you like, but don't use a right parenthesis without a left parenthesis before it, or Word will assume you're closing the brackets.

Nicholas Taylor

Set up a table, using the Draw Tables from the Table menu. Use Split Cells to divide the table into three columns and three rows. Select the middle column and use Merge Cells to create a single cell running the full height of the table. With the centre cell selected either type the bracket key, or using Symbol from the Insert menu enter the bracket. Select the bracket and enlarge the font, you may need to type a value into the font size text box to get the bracket big enough to span the whole of the centre cell. I found that the bracket sits rather low and I needed to fiddle about with the border of the table to get the centre of the bracket to coincide with the centre of the table. Now type your clauses into the remaining cells. Again be prepared to adjust vertical text alignments to obtain the desired result. Finally select the whole table. Right click on the table and select Borders and shading and from the Borders tab select None and click OK.

Bob Cannon

Use the font Symbol, which should be installed as default on all Windows PCs. Then use the following character codes. Left bracket: top segment Alt + 0236, straight Line Alt + 0239, indented Segment Alt + 0237, straight line Alt + 0239, bottom Segment Alt + 0238. Right bracket: top segment Alt + 0252, straight Line Alt + 0250, indented Segment Alt + 0253, straight line Alt + 0250, bottom segment Alt + 0254. This is for a bracket of five lines, for greater or lesser heights just change the number of straight line characters. You have to place each character of one bracket on a different line. You will need to use tabs to ensure the characters line up.
Richard Wood

A

We suspected there might be one or two ways of doing it… Many thanks to everyone who wrote in with solutions, now perhaps you can lend a hand with this one because we're stumped!

SEX SYMBOL

Does anyone know of a font that contains all three of the biological gender symbols? Several fonts have the male (♂) and female (♀) but not the hermaphrodite symbol.

Peter Wilberforce, Oban, Argyllshire

Apparently it looks like the male symbol with an extra down-pointing arrow, if anyone knows of its whereabouts please let us know.

HIDDEN TALENT

I should like to know how to access the feature that shows a dot between each word when I type. As a keyboard novice I would find it very useful. My PC runs Windows 95 and MS Office.

Allan Marshall

A

There are two ways to do this. In Word you can show all non-printing characters, including spaces, carriage returns, tab stops etc., by clicking on the Show/Hide icon on the toolbar '¶ ', (it looks like a back to front 'P'). Alternatively you can specify which non-printing characters will be displayed by going to Options on the View menu and selecting the View tab.

FIXED FONT

I use Word 97 and prefer to write in 12pt, Word on the other hand sets the New Document Template to 10 pt. Of course I can change it to 12 pt but it seems that every time I choose bold or move down a few lines it takes the opportunity to switch back to 10 pt. Using Ctrl+A then switching to 12 pt I can correct this but it's a pain. Is there any way to alter Word's blank document font size?
Simon Killingray

A

There is indeed. To set the defaults for any document template, including 'Normal' open a new blank document then go to the Format drop-down menu and select Font. Choose your typeface, font size, style and any attributes then click on the Default button. 

SAVE THE SAVER

How do you print screensavers?

Miss C Oakley

A

Press the Print Screen button on the keyboard and an image of the screensaver (Bitmap file format) is copied to the Windows Clipboard. From there it can be pasted (Ctrl + v) into graphics and paint applications or an open Word document and printed from there.